


Ghosts in Quicksilver

by EnvyBakemono



Category: Alkimia, Original Work
Genre: Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Canada, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Detective Noir, F/F, Lesbian Character, Multi, Mythology References, Non-binary character, Novel, Original Character(s), Other, POV Queer Character, Paranormal, Past Child Abuse, Queer Culture, Queer Themes, Talking To Dead People, Trans Female Character, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2018-10-19 20:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10647783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnvyBakemono/pseuds/EnvyBakemono
Summary: 17-year-old Jamal Kaye doesn't think being able to talk to ghosts is everything it's cracked up to be. But when she's offered her first case - a missing-persons case that she already knows is a murder mystery - she has to rely on her powers more than ever. It soon spins out of her control and out of her hands, as it’s made abundantly clear that not only is she not the only freak in Ottawa - she’s far from the biggest or the baddest.





	1. The Vanishing of Mr. Chaudhury

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Death, implied child abuse, stalking/death threats referenced, racism/xenophobia referenced.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follow elliottdunstan.com for more updates!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: Death, implied child abuse, stalking/death threats referenced, racism/xenophobia referenced.

Mrs. Chaudhury walked up the narrow steps into my office at six in the afternoon, and the ghost of her dead husband followed behind.

It wasn’t much of an office yet, really. It felt a little more like a closet, especially with all the boxes still scattered around, labelled variously with ‘books’, ‘random crap’, ‘personal shit’, so on, so forth - and I had my head too deep in one of those boxes to hear her entry through my muttered curses.

“Is this the Private Investigations office?”

I started upwards at the voice, then smoothed down my cowlick, clearing my throat. “Um. Yes.” I tried too hard not to look too obviously to the left of her shoulder. I saw plenty of ghosts. Usually, they minded their own business. Instead, I brushed some lint off my shoulder, and offered what I hoped was a comforting smile. “Yes, that’s me. I’m just - setting up.”

“Oh.” The woman twisted her fingers into the loose end of her headscarf, eyes downcast. They were red and raw, and I dared a quick glance at the ghost at her shoulder. He stared back at me and said nothing. “Are you open for business, then?”

I hesitated. Technically, _no_ \- but I had a horrible, sinking feeling in my stomach that I already knew what she was going to ask. I didn’t trust my voice, so I just nodded.

The woman nodded back, a small smile lighting up her face with hope. “My name is Chandra Chaudhury, and my - my husband is missing. The police say they’ve tried everything, but - I’m - I’m scared he -” She swallowed, closed her eyes, and tears poured down her face, pooling in the dimples of her cheeks and then overflowing.  

I took a deep breath. “Sit down, Mrs. Chaudhury. I’ll see what I can do.” I avoided the ghost’s silent glare. I already knew what I was going to find.

* * *

 The first time I spoke to a dead person, I was five years old and so was he. The attic of the house was the one place where the foster kids weren’t allowed, even to clean, but I could hear his voice. I let Jo sleep - she was only two - and I followed his crying, up the stairs and into the creaking, dusty quiet.

His name was Alan. I don’t think I understood that he was already dead - only that when I tried to touch him, he flinched away before I could realize that he was nothing but an illusion. But I understood the burns on his neck and arms, and I understood the jagged angle of his neck.

* * *

There’s little more embarrassing than taking someone into a room that you _know_ isn’t ready, but I tried my best to keep my face up. There was a desk, at least - a heavy, wooden, ancient thing sitting at the far end - but I hadn’t gone anywhere near the horrendous yellow floral wallpaper yet, and the holes in the back wall didn’t have more than a halfhearted coat of plaster over them. It wasn’t much of an office, but it was what I had.

“Have a seat,” I said without thinking about it - and then leapt forward to pull a box off the one chair I’d managed to salvage from somebody’s porch last garbage day. “Uh. There we go.” I sat on the other side of the desk, hoping she couldn’t tell I was just sitting on a box of books.

“You look _ridiculous_ ,” came a voice at my shoulder. I ignored it as well as I could. Jo didn’t know when to shut up.

“So what’s going on? Tell me as much as you can.”

Mrs. Chaudhury’s fingers left the tassels on her headscarf, and instead started playing with the silver bangle on her wrist. She couldn’t have been more than thirty or so, and I wondered when she’d gotten married. “My husband’s name is Gurjas, Gurjas Singh Chaudhury - I, I have copies of his ID -” She pulled them out, and I blinked a little at the pieces of paper she’d extricated from her purse. I supposed especially with all the nonsense going on south of the border, it couldn’t hurt to be extra careful with documentation. “There, that’s a copy of his driver’s license, his birth certificate, his passport -”

“Wait, a _copy_ of his passport? Did he take it with him?”

She shook her head, and laughed a little. “I’m - I’m getting all mixed up. I’m sorry. He didn’t take anything unusual with him. He just went to work, and didn’t come back.” She pulled out another piece of paper. “I called his manager and he said there wasn’t anything unusual, but this is his phone number, and the phone number of some of his colleagues - I don’t think they did anything, but maybe they’ll say something to you that they wouldn’t to me -”

I reached forward and took a gentle hold of her wrist. “Mrs. Chaudhury. Take a deep breath.”

She stared at my hand, then let her shoulders fall. “Sorry. I’m - sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. She was frantic, but her panicking had been productive. I _did_ need all this stuff. I just needed a story first. “When did you last see your husband?” I sat back, and grabbed a notepad from the half-empty box next to me, patting my pockets for a pen.

“He works nights as a nurse at the Civic. I last saw him three nights ago - October, um… October 3rd. His shifts start at 11 so it must have been about 10 o’clock or so. I’d just put the kids to bed.”

I wrote that down. “Kids?”

“We have two - Ruben’s six, and Sulha is turning three.” A small smile appeared on her face, even though her eyes still shone with tears. “Sulha doesn’t really understand what’s happening.”

I returned the smile the best that I could.

“Are you going to tell her?” came the voice at my shoulder again. I didn’t turn to look at Johara, but I knew what expression she’d have on her face - sad and pleading, trying to get me to do something. It was a good thing Mrs. Chaudhury couldn’t see her.

Instead, I ducked my head back towards the pad. “When did you contact the police?”

“When I woke up in the morning and he wasn’t back yet.”

“Really? That fast?” I tapped the pen against my cheek. “Why’d you think there was something wrong?”

She shook her head, lips pursing in confusion. “I woke up and - he wasn’t there. He’s always home by seven-thirty. I waited until eight, then I called his manager, and then the police.” She gave me a hard look, as if daring me to challenge her. I wasn’t going to bother. “They asked me if I had reason to be worried for his life.”

“Did you?”

“He’s received death threats from patients and coworkers before. Not many, but enough.”

“What kind of death threats? Like, specific ones or just generally aggressive?”

She shrugged, suddenly looking a little lost again. “Mostly general, I think. He brushed them off - kept telling me not to worry.”

“Wait, so - he’s been missing for three days, he’s gotten death threats before, and the cops have already given up?” That was just wrong. Unfortunately, it all sounded par for the course as well.

Her lips went thin and white, and she gave another brisk nod. Behind her, Gurjas’s ghost reached out. I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t touch her, that he should look away, but I couldn’t say that while Mrs. Chaudhury still had hope.

“Can I talk to him?” Johara asked. I gave an almost-imperceptible nod, focusing on the pad of paper that was rapidly filling up. Jo moved over to the half-faded man, and I caught only a few words of their conversation before Mrs. Chaudhury began to speak again, the tension in her voice carefully controlled.

“They told me to prepare for the possibility that he might have - that -” She swallowed, breathed out, and tried again. “That Gurjas might have just left me. But I _know_ him. He wouldn’t do that, and I don’t care how hopeless or romantic or innocent that sounds, he wouldn’t do this to me or our children.” She reached for her purse again. “I’ll pay, anything you want. I just need him home.”

 _I can’t accept your money_. It stuck in my throat. It would have been so easy - _so easy_ \- to tell her the truth. That her husband was dead, and that his spirit was behind her, trying desperately to tell her that he was _here_ , he’d come _back_ , he’d come _home_ \- and then what? She’d leave, heartbroken and disbelieving, Gurjas wouldn’t be any closer to reaching his rest, and… Despite myself, I glanced around the almost-office. I thought about the bills that needed paying, the grocery money that didn’t exist.

“You understand that I can’t guarantee anything.”

“Of course.” Her eyes shone - with tears, for sure, but determination as well. She wasn’t planning on taking no for an answer. “I need to know.”

I became aware of a sharp glare from the corner, where Jo was still speaking to Gurjas in low, soft tones. I knew what _that_ meant. It meant a lot of inconvenient hauntings if I _didn’t_ do it.

“Alright. We have a deal.”

I tried not to feel a little nauseous at the happy, hopeful look on her face - or the dawning realization that maybe I was kind of an asshole.


	2. Dearly Reluctant Departed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follow ghosts-in-quicksilver on Tumblr, or moonlitwaterwriting for more updates!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Death/child death, implied child abuse, past bullying.

I closed the door behind Mrs. Chaudhury with a cheery wave goodbye - then pressed my head against the wood with a deep sigh. I could feel a migraine coming on already.

“What?” Johara asked peevishly. I glared at her. She flickered a little in the light, and had the temerity to look a little embarrassed.

“So I’m solving a _murder_ now?” I asked wearily.

She shrugged it off. “I mean, you can talk to ghosts. You kind of have the upper hand on the police -”

“Jo, I’m _seventeen._ ” I blew a strand of red hair out of my face - when it stubbornly refused to move, I yanked it back behind my ear instead, and glanced over my shoulder. The stairs up to our landing seemed imbued with a certain foreboding air, but that was probably just my anxiety. Just because I _could_ talk to dead people didn’t mean it was…comfortable. Jo was fine. Jo was different. I’d known her _before_ she died, and trust me, that made a pretty big difference. “How am I supposed to solve a murder?”

“I dunno. Ask him?” she asked, with a tone that clearly meant she thought I was stupid. She probably wasn’t far off.

“Why didn’t _you?_ ” I shot back. Mostly to avoid the question.

“I was explaining the whole ghost thing.” She crossed her arms and gave me an unimpressed look. “Since you didn’t.”

“Oh, would you - _Argh._ ” I opened the door again and slipped outside, closing the door in Jo’s face. She drifted through the wood, still wearing the same unimpressed face. So, kind of pointless, but gratifying anyway. I checked the For Rent sign still wired to the banister. The phone number seemed right. It was big and clear. I debated putting sparkles on it. Maybe some neon lights.

“Staring at it isn’t going to get you a roommate.”

I - _barely -_ managed to suppress the urge to roll my eyes. “What, am I going to get another lecture on how I should be a medium or… seancer or whatever you call it? It’s bad enough you roped me into this. _”_

“How is it a bad thing? Besides, you said yes _._ ”

I gave the banister a sullen kick. She wasn’t _wrong._ I just didn’t want to talk to the guy. But rent was rent, and I’d already taken her money, and her deposit wasn’t enough to skip town with. So I was stuck.

I opened the door again, actually letting Jo through this time. It was only polite. Even if I kind of wanted to kick her teeth in.

* * *

I don’t really remember exactly how Jo died. I mean, I know how she died. Two idiot white boys stole their parent’s car and went for a cruise at night with a bottle of whiskey in the front seat. She and one of the foster kids were fooling around - or at least that’s how he put it, which means he locked her out and told her she could only come back in if she took off her shirt. She decided not to play, and crossed the road at the wrong time.

I _know_ all that. I just don’t remember it. My memory just sort of skips from having a sister who breathed and blushed and tired to living with a girl who nobody else could see and who followed me with a distracted patience. It took her a few months to wake up properly, and by then we’d both gotten used to it again. There were other things to worry about, and it’s not like I ever talked to anybody else anyway.

* * *

Gurjas Chaudhury was waiting very patiently for me - for us - once I got back up the stairs. It was kind of unnerving, actually. “You lied to my wife.”

Ah. “Yes.” I paused. “You’re blunt. That’s useful.”

“How old are you?”

This wasn’t going my way at all. If Jo hadn’t already been dead, I might have killed her.

“Does it matter?” I replied smoothly. “I can see you. I’d say that’s a mark in my favour.” I saved any commentary on Johara’s sudden, gleaming smile for later. I _did_ listen, sometimes.

He gave me a measured look. He looked good, as far as dead guys went. The gash in his throat had crystallized as a moment in time, and his beard covered the worst of it. But then he turned his head, and I bit my tongue to keep the horrified sound behind my lips - he’d almost been decapitated. “I suppose. What do you want to know?”

Well, he was being _shockingly_ unhelpful. “What happened. Obviously.”

Another measured look. How frustrating. I felt so measured he probably could have told me my weight in milligrams. “I was murdered.”

“Yeah, I _figured_ as much. Who did it?”

“Greeneyes.” The answer came almost instantly, not that it was all that revealing. What was interesting, though, was the shocked look on is face. That clearly hadn’t been what he meant to say.

I crossed the room slowly and sat down at my desk, wishing for all the world that I had a properly-intimidating swivel chair. “So, Jo, when you said you filled him in on ‘the ghost stuff’, you didn’t include -”

“-the part where we can’t lie?” she finished sweetly. “I hadn’t gotten there yet.” Have I mentioned I love my baby sister? I love my baby sister.

Gurjas shot her a deathly - haha - look, and she made a doe-eyed look of innocence back at him.

“So what were you trying to say?”

“Ghosts can’t _lie?_ ” he replied with dawning horror.

“No. Let’s get back to the part where you were trying to.” I tapped my fingers on the wood, mostly for effect - then frowned. This _really_ wasn’t adding up. “So you’re haunting your wife, you glared me into taking the job, got my _sister_ to intimidate me into it - but you won’t tell me what happened.”

“I want you to bring my body home. I don’t want you trying to solve my murder.”

“Even though you just told me who did it.”

Gurjas nodded at that. I pursed my lips, then glanced over at Johara. She looked just as confused as I did, and I wondered - not for the first time in the last few minutes - what their conversation had actually entailed. “You’re a child. Let my wife bury me. The rest you should leave to adults.”

I couldn’t think of a quicker way to get me angry than that. I could taste bile in my mouth, and a hundred possible replies leapt up. Adults. Right. ‘Adults’ like the cops who had let Chandra Chaudhury stew for three days with no progress on her husband’s case. Adults like the foster families who’d let their kids use us as target practice when they weren’t using us for their own purposes. I was sure he meant well, but _still._

I felt Johara’s eyes on me, and I kept my curled fist under the desk and my face in as much of a mask as I could manage it. “Sure. Yeah. I can do that.” _Who the fuck is Greeneyes?_ I could ask him straight up, but now he knew he couldn’t lie, so he’d just purse his lips and I wouldn’t get anywhere. “Where am I going?”

“LeBreton Flats.”

“Great. The part of Ottawa that fun forgot.”

Gurjas didn’t laugh. I didn’t like him much - but I guess judging the recently murdered on their sense of humour wasn’t particularly _fair,_ either. And Mrs. Chaudhury… _I need to know._

“Fine. You stay here. Or wander off and haunt somewhere else, I don’t care. Just give me a little space.” Okay, I could probably be nicer to him, but something about him was rubbing me the wrong way. Hah. Like I didn’t know. _Pretentious, obstructionist, condescending…_

I stood up and headed for the stairs, taking a second to glance outside. It didn’t _look_ too cold, and the leaves were only starting to tinge orange at the corners, but the wind was whistling through them in fits and starts. _I’m sad. Why the fuck am I sad this time?_ Who the hell knows? My emotions did whatever they wanted. But I stood there for a little while anyway, not really thinking about anything at all, fingers resting on the loose buttons of my jacket -

-and the doorbell rang, and brought me hurtling down to earth. Ow. “Uh…” I stared down the stairs. What?

Johara sighed behind me. “ _Jamal._ The _sign._ ”

“The - Oh!” I hurtled down the stairs, and ripped open the door - “Hi!” I exclaimed, a little more cheerily than necessary. Then I straightened up, glancing up and down and finally taking him in - blond mop of neat hair, glasses, dweeby grin… and _plaid._ God, why did it have to be plaid? “Er, are you here about the sign?”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah! Er, you’re looking for a roommate - I -” He waffled around for a bit.

I stared down at the sign. For Rent. Then I looked back up at him. “…Wanna start with your name?”

“Nathan. Nathan Beaufort. Er - sorry, I was expecting a man.”

Christ. “Learn to live with disappointment. You wanna see the room or not?” “I suppose so. Er, is it alright? That I’m -”

“Male?”

“Yes.”

I cast a despairing glance back at Johara, who was sitting about an inch above the stairs.

“Be nice to him!” She indicated a smile with her hands. Oh great, she _liked_ him. She always did like the pathetic ones. I looked back at him. “I’m gay. So it’s all good. Come on in.” “Oh. Um, yes! Yeah! Sure!”

I held the door open, and couldn’t help a smirk. It only got wider as I saw Johara’s horrified look, and I let him go up the stairs in front of me, stifling a snort of laughter in my sleeve. He’d do. Especially if he could pay the rent on time. All the same, solving a murder was going to be a little harder with a roommate that twitchy.

Well, that was if he took the room. But if I’m good at anything, it’s getting well ahead of myself and falling flat on my face. Maybe this time I could skip the last part for a change.


	3. Unknown Variables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follow ghosts-in-quicksilver or moonlitwaterwriting on Tumblr for more updates!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Financial/money discussion, mild police mention, death, organized crime mention, paranoia.

I think my biggest problem with Nathan was that there wasn’t anything obviously wrong with him. He was blond, tallish, rake-thin, and obviously kind of shy, but I couldn’t figure out what a boy like him was… well… doing here. There are plenty of apartments in this area, and the house I was in was a wreck. The hydro bills weren’t bad, and nothing had fallen down yet, but… Ah, who am I kidding? I was convinced that you had to be running from the cops or scared of rich white suburbia to be trying to live here. Probably not the healthiest sentiment, but I don’t pretend to be at peace with my own issues.

And, I mean, I was technically doing both. So. Whatever.

“So what’s the rent like?”

“It’s like six hundred a month.” I quietly closed the study door before he could get a glimpse at the disaster area - not that the rest of the house was a great improvement, but the rest of it was mostly just…bare. “Kitchen, bathroom, and then this is your bedroom over here.” I opened the door. Dustbunnies were still trying to breed on the hardwood floor, but the last tenant’s removal of the bed had exposed them to sunlight for the first time in years. I imagined I could hear them shrieking in misery.

“Oh! That’s bigger than I thought it would be.”

I snorted, and let him run past me into the room. He looked like an excitable kid. “I think it was two rooms at some point. The hardwood in the middle there looks all weird.”

“So where’s your room?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s that one there.” I jerked my thumb back at the closed study.

He raised an eyebrow in a sudden fit of skepticism. It didn’t look right on him. “Isn’t that your office?”

“What would make you think that?”

“The sign that says ‘Jamal Kaye, Private Investigations’.”

“Where does it say that?” I squawked, and turned my head. Right. I’d leaned it up against the wall, even if I hadn’t put it up yet. “Oh. Never mind.” I turned back to him. “Yes, it’s my office. What’s your point?”

“You’re sleeping in your office?”

“I’m conserving space,” I retorted. “For six hundred a month, you come up with a better plan.”

I saw the idea flash into his eyes. Even if I knew he wouldn’t say it.

“I don’t care how big this bedroom is,” I added, somewhat dourly. He gave me what he probably thought was an innocent look, although the embarrassed flush on his face said more than that.

“I like it here,” he said after a moment.

“It’s a dumpster,” I corrected him. Although it was a nice statement.

“It’s got character.”

“God.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, although I could feel a smile starting on my face. He did have a certain charm to him.

Charm or not, though, he’d wasted my time. By the time I managed to kick him out and lock the door behind me, it was getting dark out. I didn’t admit to being scared of anything, but that didn’t mean I was an idiot. If I wanted to scout LeBreton Flats, it had to be soon.

—

After Johara died, I started seeing them everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I guess I’d blocked them out after a few years when I was little, but now, I saw them in in the supermarket. I saw them on the highway. I saw them clustered in groups on park benches, shivering in the perpetuity of death under a blazing July sun.

Death was everywhere. It hovered at my shoulder, it whispered in my ear, it followed me and it taunted my sister with its presence. I started seeing it in the eyes of people I knew. People I hated. People I didn’t.

So I ran. Maybe I couldn’t really outrun Death, but I was sure as hell gonna try.

Until she came to my door with sad eyes and a plea for help.

—-

There was a cab across the street, and I tucked my hands into my pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind as I sprinted across the road. The driver - I assumed they were the driver, anyway - was leaning against the Tennessy Willems mural, sucking on a cigarette with a distracted gaze upwards.

“Hey.” I tried to grab their attention. “Hey, is this your car?”

“Hm?” They lowered their head, and blinked at me. “Ah. Yes, she is. Looking for a ride?” They tucked a long dreadlock behind their ear, pushing themselves off the blue wall.

“Yeah. LeBreton Flats?”

They took another drag on their cigarette. I got the sudden feeling that they were laughing at me. He? I couldn’t tell - these days, I just didn’t assume. Besides, between the long hair and their slim, striped-shirted figure, there wasn’t much to draw from. “I can do that.” They dropped their cigarette and squashed it under the heel of their boot, then leant down and carefully peeled the butt from the ground, dropping it delicately into the dumpster. I couldn’t help the small smile of amusement on my face.

“Alright, hop on in.” They nodded at their cab, a sleek, dark Chrysler with a few dents and bruises along its side. I gathered it had seen better days, but as I climbed into the back seat, I noticed that the back had been reupholstered. I gave the cabbie another intrigued glance. It was my job to notice things about people - and I always made note of the interesting ones.

“So, LeBreton Flats? Anywhere in particular?”

“Just drop me off in front of the museum, I guess.”

Their curious eyes appeared in the rearview mirror, but they kept their own counsel. “The War Museum it is. They’ll be closed by now.”

“That’s alright.” I leant back - and just managed to suppress my yelp of surprise as Johara appeared in the seat next to me. I kept my mouth shut. Thankfully.

“I’m sorry!” she cried out as she saw my face. “I didn’t want to miss out!”

I wondered if I could express ‘get back inside before I figure out how to whup your ectoplasmic ass’ through facial expressions. I couldn’t say anything. Not with the driver up front.

Johara, unfortunately, seemed to have figured that out. “I’ll be useful! I can be your spy.”

I satisfied myself with a stony glare.

“Oh come on.” She sighed in exasperation, grey ringlets bobbing. “I’m fourteen. I’m allowed to do things. And besides. I can’t get hurt, I’m _dead_. You don’t need to be overprotective.”

I pressed a hand over my mouth to stop the squawk of annoyance from bubbling upwards. Being dead didn’t mean she got to do anything she wanted!

Again, I got the horrible feeling that the driver was laughing at me. I hoped they weren’t watching me be ridiculous. I slouched down into the leather seat, then pulled my pad of paper out of my pocket. Three days. Gurjas had been missing for three days.

I flipped to a new page, chewed on the end of my pen, then wrote ‘GREENEYES’ in the middle, circling it for good measure. Mob boss? Ottawa wasn’t big on mafia, and whatever organized crime there was was out in suburbia hell, not downtown. Or maybe it was a descriptor. Green Eyes. Right. So a decent chunk of the human race.

From the corner of my eye, I caught the cab driver glancing back at me. I ignored them as best I could. They made me…not uncomfortable, exactly. But they kept giving me this slightly unnerving sense of knowing. It was probably just my paranoia acting up again - but if you assumed everybody was watching you, you ended up being right eventually.

I closed my pad, marking it with a thumb, and stared out the window, watching the river flow by with the refuse of early autumn. Then, a few moments later, the jagged roof of the War Museum came into view. We were on the Flats.

They pulled to a halt in front of the museum, and I leant forward to check the meter. “Hey, you didn’t -” The meter was off, and I stared at it with suspicion, waiting for the catch.

They just gave me a crooked grin, dark eyes sparkling. “Just stay out of trouble, okay?” This time, I caught the hint of a French accent lingering under their words.

“Uh. Sure.” I started to crawl back, but their hand flashed out to grab my arm. I raised my eyes to meet theirs, and a lump of fear rose in my throat at the sudden steely fire I met there.

“I mean it. Stay out of trouble.”

I clawed at their hand, tearing it off of me. “I didn’t ask you.” I climbed out of the car, gave them one last look - and paused. They weren’t looking at me anymore. They were looking into the back seat, and right at Johara.

That was impossible. That was -

I slammed the door, and the impact reverberated through the entire cab. I watched them drive away, and tried to make my heart rate slow down. Finally, I let myself look at Jo. Her eyes were wide, and even through her grey pallor, she was pale and drawn. “They looked at me.”

“Jo -”

“They looked at me,” she repeated insistently.

“That’s impossible.”

“Why were they looking at me?” she said again in a strangled voice.

I should have had something better to say. Instead, I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it.” And I tried not to.

I had a body to find.


	4. The Lebreton Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follow ghosts-in-quicksilver or moonlitwaterwriting on Tumblr for more updates!

Let’s be perfectly clear here. There is nothing special about LeBreton Flats. There’s a museum about how we’ve learned to kill people the most efficiently through the years. In the summer, a bunch of sweaty preps get together and think they’re cultured because they watch pop stars pretend to be country singers. One time, a stage collapsed on some aging eighties band. That is the _extent_ of excitement in this neighborhood. Population: 300-something.

You’d think Gurjas would have the decency to get killed somewhere _interesting._

Gurjas hadn’t had the decency to do much, though. It was pretty obvious that he didn’t want to tell me much, and once I’d pulled the lying trick on him, I wouldn’t be able to trust anything _else_ he said. Ghosts can’t lie. Ghosts _can_ clam up, misdirect, and otherwise be as much of a dick as they like. So I was stuck with an entire neighborhood to canvass.

Still, I did know three very important things.

One. The home address Mrs. Chaudhury was in Nepean - way, _way_ south of here.

Two. So was the Civic Hospital. I knew my bus routes. This led me to the inescapable, very, _very_ interesting three - that whatever Gurjas had been doing here, he hadn’t been on his way home from work.

I pulled out my phone, and managed to grab a decent map of LeBreton. At least he hadn’t gotten killed somewhere busy. LeBreton was mostly flatland and construction, which didn’t leave a lot of potential dumping grounds. “So what do you think had him all the way out here?” I said slyly.

Johara gave me a hurt look. “I’m sure he had a _good_ reason.”

“Like a mistress.”

“He _wouldn_ _’t,”_ she pronounced with a glare.

I snorted, and aimed my grin at the ground. “Aw. Jumping to his defense already.” Jo had a soft spot for lost souls, dead or alive.

“He’s a nice man! He didn’t deserve what happened.”

I paused at that. “Nobody does. Whether he had a mistress or not doesn’t change that.” I sighed, and glanced up at the construction zone next to the museum. The summer had been filled with all sorts of grand plans and ideas for what to do with the place. Libraries. Arenas. But all I could see was an empty stretch of torn-up earth, dead and wasted space, criss-crossed with tire-marks and withered grass. “Well, his body’s somewhere in here. Look for disturbed earth, anywhere where there might have been digging, stuff like that.”

“Over all of _this?_ ”

“Yeah. Get started.” I gave her an amused glance. “Hey, _you_ wanted to come.”

She drifted off without further comment, and I shook my head. Typical. I stepped out onto the broken field, and started taking measured paces, using my phone as a flashlight. It probably would have been easier during the day, but the construction workers would all be here during the day, and every other teenager playing hooky from school, and people in the museum… Besides, three days later, Gurjas probably wasn’t looking his best.

“Hello.”

I licked my lips and tried to ignore them. I could see the ghost at the edge of my vision, pearly grey with the kind of fuzzing around the edges that really old ghosts get. Like old Polaroids. If I pretended I couldn’t hear them, they’d go away.

They drifted around me curiously as I kept my steady pace, searching for a sign. I nearly stuck my foot in a puddle, I was so focused on _not_ looking at them.

“I like your hair.”

Why were they _talking_ to me? Were they so old and lonely that they were talking to everyone or -

“Don’t worry, she’s just crabby,” Johara said cheerfully. “Jamal, she thinks she knows where -”

“Goddamit, Jo!” I burst out, circling on her. She recoiled, doe eyes blinking, but I wasn’t fooled. She knew _exactly_ what she was doing. “Twice? Twice in _one day?_ ”

“You can’t just _ignore_ it!”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want, _thanks._ ” I was so tempted to throw my phone at her, but it’s not like that would have done anything anyway. I ran my fingers through my hair and groaned in frustration - and, my secret having been spilled, turned my attention reluctantly to the _second_ ghost I’d had to deal with that day.

She was young. Older than me, but that didn’t mean much - I was practically a baby compared to most of the ghosts I ran into. I couldn’t imagine how long she’d been dead, though - the dress she had on was the kind of thing you saw in museums and ancient photographs.

I took a deep breath. “Okay, what was Jo talking about?”

The ghost blinked, translucent eyelashes long and fluttering against her patchy, age-stained cheek. “Are you looking for a body?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. At least Gurjas had been recently dead. The older ghosts freaked me out on a completely different level. _How many years has she been here? Wandering around half-alive, waiting for somebody to keep her company?_ I pushed the thoughts away, but the existential terror refused to budge.

“He’s buried in the riverbank,” she said quietly.

“The bank? Did you see what happened?”

She shook her head. “I saw the girl, though.”

I paused, and my heart skipped a beat. Then I yanked my pad out of my pocket. “A girl?”

“Yes. There was a young girl with him.”

I stared at the white paper for a moment, then back up at her. “Okay, young girl is vague. Are you talking twenties, teenager, toddler?”

“It’s hard to say. Late teens, I think, but she might have been younger.”

I swallowed. “Did she - seem scared?”

“A little. He wasn’t being rough with her, though. Was he her father?”

I took a deep breath. “No. No, I don’t think so.” Gurjas’s daughter was six. Whoever he’d had with him, it hadn’t been Sulha Chaudhury. “Did you see where she went?”

“She ran off…that way.” She pointed downtown. That wasn’t the most helpful direction, but I jotted it down anyway. “She was… thin. And her eyes weren’t right.”

“That’s not exactly specific,” I murmured. “Take us to the bank where he is. We need that body.”

The ghost nodded. I had the feeling I was being rude, and awkwardly, I added. “What’s your name?”

She paused, a photograph in the dark. Then she murmured, “I don’t remember.”

—

I first noticed the smell a few metres from the riverbank, and it only got worse as I got closer. Johara wasn’t bothered, and actually gave me a concerned look as I held the sleeve of my jean jacket to my nose.

It was the smell of rotting meat. Our guide stopped, well back from the disturbed earth. I kept going. The turned soil was conspicuous if you were looking for it, too far back from the actual running water to be a consequence of the river.

I wondered if I should just call the police now. But a patch of dark ground wasn’t enough, even with the smell. I looked around, found a branch, and tried not to gag as I pulled my sleeve from my nose. Slowly, swallowing the bile rising up my throat, I started scraping the soil aside.

“Jamal, I’m scared,” Johara whimpered quietly.

A snarky response bubbled in my head, but I pushed it away. “It’ll be okay. He’ll be at rest. We’re doing the -” I swallowed. “The right thing.” I’d seen enough ghosts in various stages of decomposition. This couldn’t be any worse.

The stick hit something - and sank into it. My stomach roiled, and I threw myself away, emptying my stomach into the bushes. My head wouldn’t stop spinning, and Johara was crying softly behind me. “I don’t wanna look, Jamal, please, please -”

I closed my eyes. “Jo, you’re _dead._ And so is he. We’ve talked to him.”

“It’s - it’s different.”

“Yeah. It is.” I wiped my mouth, taking a shuddering breath. I shouldn’t be snapping at her. She had more reasons to be scared of death than I did. I didn’t even remember what she’d looked like after the car had hit her - but I had a feeling she did. I’d never asked her. We didn’t talk about it. Understandably enough, I felt.

I turned back to the grave, and fought off another wave of hysterical nausea as I realized the branch was sticking straight up into the air. Poor Gurjas. I hoped it wasn’t his face. I took a hold of it, yanked it out -

I heard a breath behind me. There was somebody else living, there with me and the dead.


	5. Green Eyed Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: PTSD, stalking implications, general unnerving interactions, violence, mind control/suggestions

            The first thing I noticed about the woman behind me was that her eyes were fixed on me - not the grave I was halfway through digging up. She was dressed all in black, tall and slim and shadowy with ghostly pale skin. “Well,” she exhaled with a giddy smile spreading over her face and hands on her hips. “Who are you, then?”

            I wasn’t sure if I wanted to answer that question. “Just passing through, ma’am. Don’t worry about it.”

            “ _Ma’am._ God, you must be joking. Do I look that old?”

           “Everybody looks old to me,” I retorted before I could stop myself. She didn’t, though. She had sort of the eternally-twenty-nine thing going on - which I supposed wasn’t _young,_ either.

            She laughed at that, and I watched her mouth uneasily. Her teeth looked a little…sharp. Maybe it was just the paranoia of being out alone in the middle of the night, chasing down a body. I figured that would put _anybody_ on edge.

             Still -

            “We haven’t met, right?” I found myself asking, ignoring the strange glance I got from Jo.

            The stranger blinked at that, then she smiled again. “Don’t think so. I’d remember you.”

             I just nodded. “Anyway, I was on my way home. Sorry I disturbed you.” I turned away and started walking back towards the main road, my heart still in my throat. _Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it._

             Johara whispered - even though she didn’t need to - “J-Jamal? Why is she here?”

             “I have some theories,” I whispered back -

             “Who are you talking to?” Her smooth voice cut through the quiet air, and I felt my shoulders stiffen. I listened to her footsteps coming up behind me.

             “Just myself. Can I go home now?”

             “Hmm.” She was right behind me now. I turned around to face her, a flash of irrational fear filling me as I craned my neck up. She was easily a head taller than me. That shouldn’t have concerned me so much. She might have been tall, but that just meant I had a lower centre of gravity. “Is it a ghost?”

             My blood froze. I managed to force a smile which sat on my face semi-convincingly. “Haha. You’re funny. I dunno what drugs you’ve been smoking, but -”

            “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody.”

            She was staring at me, not Johara. As I stood there, frozen, Jo moved her hand in between us, fingers trembling. The woman didn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t see Johara. Somehow, she just…knew.

 _I won't tell anybody - don't tell anybody -_ I didn't like that phrase. It echoed around in my head in ways that felt a little bit too familiar, a little bit too dark.

            "Remember the cab driver?" Johara asked, although her voice was trembling. "Maybe we're not the only ones." Then I realized the tremble in her voice wasn't fear. It was excitement.

            I didn't respond. I wasn't quite ready to give up my secrets that fast. I shifted my feet, and stuck my hands in my pocket, staring resolutely up at the woman. "Tell anybody what?"

            She grinned. I still didn't trust it, but maybe Jo was right. Maybe. My paranoia didn't like that word either. "You're Salt, aren't you?"

            "...Is that a joke about me being bitter? Because I'm not following."

            Her eyebrows flickered almost imperceptibly upwards. Shocked, but trying to hide it. "You don't know?"

            "Don't know what?"

            "Well..." she shrugged. It took me a few moments to realize she wasn't going to continue talking. Instead, her eyes flickered over me with a bemused interest.

            I took a step backwards, and her gaze snapped back up to my face. "You're lying."

            My heart leapt into my throat. "About what?"

            "You're a Salt. I can feel it." She gave me a crooked smile, but her green eyes were flashing, desperation writ large.

            I was missing something. Scratch that. I was missing everything. Whoever this was, she was working from a completely different context than me.

            She took another step forward, a silver streak appearing in her hair. It must have been there before - I just couldn't see it in the dark - or at least that's what I told myself. "Come on. Just tell me about it."

            "About -" I couldn't keep playing innocent forever. And I was starting to think maybe lying wasn't going to get me out of this. But I barely believed it myself, that I was more than just crazy, and I didn't need other people in my business, because it was mine -

            I pulled my switchblade out of my pocket, keeping my hands still even though all they wanted to do was tremble. I flicked it open, and took a deep breath. "I think you need to back off now."

            I expected her to get angry, or rude. I didn't expect her face to fall, or there to be hurt in her eyes. She chuckled, although her eyes still held that sadness, and then shrugged. "You never used to be so paranoid. But yeah, I'll go."

            She half-turned away, and then paused. "Oh, and...Kiera."

            "Kiera?"

            "My name." She gave me something that was almost a smile, and then - she vanished. Like she'd never been here. Like nothing had happened at all.

            I tried to swallow. My mouth was dry, heart pounding against my ribcage.

            "Jamal? Are you okay?"

            I nodded, mostly to make Jo feel better. I wasn't okay, but I needed to be. I didn't have the energy to not be okay.

            _You never used to be so paranoid._

            I'd blocked out Johara's death. There were entire pieces of my childhood missing, erased by trauma and wilful forgetfulness. But for the first time in a long time, I started to think some of what was missing was coming back for me.

            And hoo boy, that was not something I wanted.

            I pulled out my phone, but my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn't dial the number I wanted. Instead, I let myself sink to the ground before I fell, putting my head between my knees. _You never used to be so paranoid._

_You're a Salt._

            What the fuck did that mean?

            I took another deep breath, trying to ignore Jo's worried stare. Then I picked my phone up again, searching for the anonymous tip line. Finally, I gave up and just dialed the main number.

            "Ottawa Police Station, how can I help -"

            "There's a body," I interrupted. I had to keep it short. "LeBreton flats, by the river next to the War Museum. Something's tried to dig at it."

            "A body? Who -"

            I didn't let her ask who I was. "Buried. You should probably send a car out here or something." Then I hung up. That was plenty of information.

            Which meant I had to get out of here. But I sat there for a little longer anyway, fighting away the unexplainable, sudden urge to cry.

* * *

            When I got back to the main road outside the War Museum, the black Chrysler was there. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It made sense in a twisted, mean sort of way. Of course the fucking cab driver was back here. Or maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing and I was walking in circles.

            The door opened, and they stepped out, erasing any possibility that it was somebody else. This smelled rotten. Beyond rotten.

            I sped up my pace - _you never used to be so paranoid -_ until I was striding towards them, fingers curling until I felt nails dig into my palm.

            They gave me a smile - it looked too much like Kiera’s - and I came to a stop in front of them.

            “How’d it go?”

            “I stayed out of trouble,” I snapped, and then without any more prelude, drove my fist into their face. There was a particular joy to watching tall people stumble, and this one ended up sprawled against the side of their cab, wincing and rotating their jaw. “Now tell me who the _fuck_ you are.” I drew back my fist, ready to hit them again if I had to.

            They pushed against the car, straightening up with a hand pressed to their jaw. “There’s no need to be violent -”

            I hit them again, this time in the stomach. Mostly on principle. I didn’t like condescension.

            “Jamal, _stop it!_ ”

            _I won’t tell anybody -_

_Don’t tell anybody._

            “Fuck off, Jo.” I snarled. “I don’t _need_ this bullshit.” I glared at the driver, who hadn’t made a _single_ move in retaliation. I didn’t trust that. It just made me want to lash out again, get _some_ sort of response -

            The whisper in the back of my head was so quiet that I barely realized it was there. _Stop._

Every muscle in my body froze, then my arms fell uselessly by my sides, like every bit of energy had been drained out of them. I still wanted to fight. I was still angry. The words were still ringing around my head, echoing louder and louder - but the whisper was stronger even that. _Stop._ A simple command. My own head trying to be rational. Or -

            Damn, maybe I _was_ paranoid, but I wasn’t taking a hell of a lot for granted right now. “What did you do to me?” I hissed.

            The driver didn’t look terribly startled. That was not helping the paranoia. "Ah. That wasn't me."

            I raised my fist again, considering the switchblade in my pocket with a level of seriousness. We were out in the open, but I could feel walls closing in on me anyway -

            "Willow, that's enough," the driver sighed, although with a bit of thought I realized I'd probably winded them. Whoops.

            "Willow?" I echoed. I could feel Jo glaring at me. I turned to her, and hissed under my breath, " _What_?"

            She crossed her arms. "If you hadn't been so ready to pick a fight," she grumbled, "you would have noticed there's somebody else here." She inclined her chin back towards the car.

            There was somebody in the front seat. I stared at the silhouette in the dark window, confused, and then the window rolled down. The person inside poked her head through, folding fishnet-clad arms over the edge and popping a pink bubble.

_You done being a violent nutcase now?_

            "Will," the driver said again, exhaustion obvious in their voice as they glared down at the blonde. "Lose the gum."

            The blonde chewed thoughtfully, then grinned at me. She looked a little like a fox, with high cheekbones and a pointy chin, strands falling from her blonde ponytail and framing her face.  "Okay. You done being a violent nutcase now?"

            I blinked. Yeah. Okay. Reality was definitely coming apart a little. First strange women who knew me for some reason, spat out nonsense and vanished, and now I was hearing voices in my head, apparently. Well, that wasn't completely abnormal. But the voices weren't supposed to be _real_.

            "To answer your question -" Willow glanced up at the driver, who was giving her a pretty annoyed look that I had no context for, " _out loud_ because I think Avery's mad at me, I'm Willow. This is Avery."

            That did _not_ answer my qu-

            "Okay, _yes_ , that doesn't actually answer your question -"

            "Get out of my head!" I snapped. This was _not_ happening. I was not standing here getting psychoanalyzed or hypnotized or whatever by some stranger with an attitude -

            The driver muttered something angrily in French, and Will shrugged. "It's not my fault she thinks so loud."

            "This is some kind of trick, isn't it?" I snarled. Kiera's words were still dancing around my brain, one thought chasing another's tail in a neverending circle.

            Will blinked, then shot an uncertain look up at Avery. It was Avery, eventually, who answered me.

            "You can talk to ghosts. Can't you?" they said softly.

            I felt like _I'd_ been punched in the stomach. "Fuck off. Your _friend_ started getting at me for the same thing."

            "Kiera isn't my friend."

            "You fucking _knew_ \- you _knew_ I was going to run into her?"

            Avery shook their head. "It's -" They pulled a face.

            "You read my mind. Right."

            "Not on purpose. It's like trying to block out a foghorn. Her name was right at the surface."

            "Is that supposed to make sense to me? How - how does any of this make sense?" My head was spinning more and more. I could hear police sirens in the background, and Will made a face as the blue and red lights started getting closer.

            Avery smiled, brown eyes crinkling. I wondered how they could look at me like that after I'd tried beating them up. Hell, I'd even split their lip. I hadn't decided whether or not I felt bad or not yet. "You're not the only freak in Ottawa." They nodded their head at the Chrysler. "Want a ride? From one freak to another."

            Inside my head, their voice echoed again - not the same kind of controlling whisper as before. Just an open message. _You're not alone._


	6. Thinking Loudly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for casual (reclaimed) ableist language.

In the end, I said yes, although if you were to ask me why, I’m not sure I’d have a coherent answer. I supposed it was that the threat of running into that woman again scared me more than climbing into a car with two strangers.

 

That, and they supposedly had some answers for me. It was weird - I’d never really thought of _asking_ any of the questions that had apparently been rolling around in my head for the last decade or so. I just accepted my own peculiarity without a lot of insight or existential despair. Or at least, I thought I had.

 

“What happened to your curiosity?” Will teased from the other end of the passenger seat. I ignored her, staring out of the window instead and trying to look as aggressively passive-aggressive as possible. I wanted answers, but the prospect of actually _asking_ for them made me want to retch. Even being in a car with two people I didn’t trust as far as I could throw was pushing it.

 

Johara, on the other hand… “You should ask them, Jamal,” she murmured, bizarrely innocent and trusting as ever. Or maybe she was just smarter than me. “Maybe they know what happened to Mr. Chaudhury.”

 

“Mr. Chaudhury?” Will clicked her tongue. “I don’t know _that_ name, I’m afraid.”

 

I turned my head slightly towards Will, hissing, “You’re reading my mind again.” She could hear Jo. That just… No. That wasn’t _right._

“Technically, we’re not,” Avery commented from the front seat. “We can hear Johara because you can, but it’s surface. We’d have to actively _not_ pay attention to ignore her.”

 

That still sounded like mind-reading to me, but I kept my own counsel. Surface - they’d said that about Kiera’s name, too. Besides, I could hear Jo’s little gasp of excitement. She’d been stuck with just me for company for the last two years - I guess I couldn’t really deprive her of a little bit of conversation.

 

“Can - can you really hear me?” she asked in a quiet voice.

 

“Sure can. I can’t see you, but I bet you’re pretty.”

 

Johara laughed at that, and I stifled my grumble behind pursed lips. Great. Now my dead fourteen-year-old sister was getting hit on.

 

I tried to ignore that conversation, and caught Avery’s eyes in the rearview mirror, dark and enigmatic. I tore my glance away and back out the window, but after gathering a little bit of courage, I thought, _I shouldn_ _’t have hit you. Sorry._

_Ah, that_ _’s alright. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. I think I give off the wrong signals._

I startled slightly at the response, then suddenly unsure what to do with my hands, put them in my lap. Okay. Thinking loudly apparently _worked._ I snuck a glance over at Will and Johara. “…like an onion, really. Have you seen Shrek?” Yeah, I definitely wasn’t missing anything important.

 

 _Don_ _’t worry about Will,_ Avery said - thought? - with a small chuckle out loud. _She means well._

_I_ _’m not sure how much I trust ‘means well’ when it comes to mind control._

_That_ _’s fair. I can promise you that we only use it when we have to._

I thought about the command I’d gotten from Will, the little whispered word. Stop. Yeah. Yeah, that’d been fair. _So can I do any of that? Like, I_ _’m talking to you like this now -_

_That_ _’s normal. You’re just thinking really loudly._ They laughed again, and I pulled a face in their general direction. Apparently they’d heard _that,_ too. _We all have our gifts._

_Who_ _’s we? You seem to be in charge._

Avery shrugged, then paused with one hand on the wheel, poking their head into the backseat. “What are you telling that poor girl, Willow?”

 

“Oh, just about that time I got that guy’s wallet and turned out he had business cards from every adult store in Ottawa -”

 

“ _Will._ ”

 

She blinked. “What? She’s fourteen, not d- oh, well -”

 

I considered hitting her. Jo stifled a giggle, and I glared up at Avery. “What was that about only using the mind control thing when necessary?”

 

“I was homeless,” Will protested. “And out of makeup. It was _totally_ necessary.”

 

I hid my smile behind my hand.

 

“There’s lots of us,” Avery said out loud, answering my question from earlier.

 

“And everybody can do different things?” The paranoia was still there, creeping around in the back of my head, but the curiosity had taken over. Fucking sue me, okay? Avery’s welcome mat message was still ringing in the back of my head - _you_ _’re not alone -_ and as cheesy and Hallmark as it was, I was a foster kid. The concept was appealing, if not altogether trustworthy.

 

Will held up seven fingers. “There’s seven types. _Obviously,_ Sulfurs are the best -”

 

“- There are three celestial elements, and four core elements,” Avery finished with a sigh, and Will huffed at being interrupted. “Sulfur, Salt and Mercury are celestial. And the core ones are Fire, Earth, Air and Water.”

 

I looked over at Johara, who shrugged. “Don’t look at _me._ You’re the one who knows things.”

 

“No, I fake knowing things. It’s different.”

 

Will snorted. “Don’t worry, nobody cares about the core elements anyway.”

 

“That’s not what you were saying when Laura singed your eyebrows,” Avery commented dryly. “All seven elements are important.”

 

“Is this some Last Airbender shit?”

 

“Not far off.” Avery came to a stop, and I realized we were outside my house. “But as always, the truth is more strange and sad and complicated than fiction can ever be.” They unlocked my door with a ‘click’ that sounded very final, but I could tell they weren’t quite done. “You’re a Salt elemental.”

 

Elemental. That sounded a little Dungeons and Dragons to me. Then the rest of it clicked. “…That’s what Kiera was talking about?”

 

“Yes. With practice, we can recognize each other.”

 

“See, I thought you clocked me because of Jo’s nonstop chattering -”

 

“ _Hey!_ ” Jo swatted inefficiently at me. Then she bit her lip, and finally managed to get out whatever had been on her mind throughout all this. “…How - how do you know?”

 

Avery tucked a purple dreadlock behind their ear. “Know what?” they asked, although I had a sense they already knew.

 

Johara paused, then closed her eyes. I looked between her and Avery for a moment in confusion - then Avery nodded, and I realized it was a conversation I hadn’t been privy to. I supposed that was fair enough, but it didn’t stop the lump in my throat as I realized I wasn’t Jo’s one and only secret-keeper anymore.

 

“Well,” I said, breaking the silence, “thanks for the ride.” I let myself out. My head was feeling foggy again. I’d expected _something_ to happen, but this was… a lot. Too much information, too many people. I plodded across the road, over to the sidewalk -

 

“Hey, hold up!”

 

I stopped, and half-turned. Will had sprinted across the road, and now she stood over me with a smile on her too-wide mouth, blonde ponytail bobbing. She was taller than me - not that that was hard - and now that I was seeing her standing, she had the gracefulness of an overgrown giraffe.

 

“You’re not very old, are you?” I commented with a twist at the end of my lips.

 

“Neither are you. Aren’t you supposed to be in kindergarten or something?”

 

I chose not to rise to the bait. “What do you want?”

 

She plucked my pen from my pocket with a startling speed, and grabbed my hand, pushing up my jacket sleeve and scrawling a few numbers on my arm. “I know all this shit is weird as fuck and probably not what you wanted from today, but just in case you get curious or need help -”

 

“-from what, you two chuckleheads?”

 

“Don’t push your luck.” She tucked the pen behind her ear. “The point being that you can reach me at that number. I don’t know. We can go out for coffee or something.”

 

I looked at the numbers that she’d written upside-down on my skin. “I thought I was a violent nutcase.”

 

“Eh, we all are. Crazies gotta stick together, right?”

 

“I’m not crazy.”

 

She gave me a lopsided grin, blue eyes twinkling. “That’s what we all say.” Then she turned and left, waving a goodbye over her shoulder. “Ta!”

 

Ta. How _pretentious._ Still, I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe - _maybe -_ I’d take her up on it.

 

If nothing else, I had to get my pen back.


	7. Pretending to be Normal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: Abandonment, PTSD, smoking, paranoia/unreality, referenced abuse, financial difficulties, death

**Chapter Seven: Pretending To Be Normal**

 

The Civic Hospital emergency room is dressed in beige, white and blue, and the lights above flicker, desperately trying to provide light and warmth to a room that's absorbed the unhappiness, misery and pain of countless people. Hospitals try so hard to be something other than they are. I can't fault them. We all do it.

 

I can't decide whether I was dreaming or not. I can't feel my feet against the floor, or the air against my hands, even though I know I _should._ One moment I think I'm seventeen and fully-grown and too, too aware of all the things I'm here to find out. The next moment, I'm fifteen, and my sister's dying. And then I'm twelve again and Johara's next to me, small and nervous and wondering why we're here.

 

My brain skips the part where the nurse comes up to us and asks if we're lost, and guides us elsewhere in the hospital. I can vaguely remember how she found somebody to keep us company, concern mixed with a desire to help. Instead, my dream keeps us in the emergency room.

 

A baby starts crying. I turn around, and I can't see Jo next to me, even though I can feel her chubby hand in mine, sweaty and sticky - and between the automatic glass doors, I can see the little girl. She's maybe three, four years old. The baby in her arms is too big for her, sliding out of her arms. She's small and brown and dirty, and somebody's tried to cut her red hair short so it sticks out at angles from her head.

 

The baby won't stop crying. "You have to be quiet!" she insists. "Mommy said she's coming back soon!"

  
"Jamal?" Jo sat cross-legged in front of me, the pose making her look a lot more solid than she really was. It helped.

  
"Mm. Hi." I managed to mov

 

There's somebody walking away from the hospital, a black windbreaker wrapped tightly around her thin frame. I don't know if she's my mother. But I find myself running anyway, hand stretched out, because I'm so close, so close this time. All I need is to see her _face._

 

I cross the space between her and me in a single step. My hand brushes against her shoulder, but then suddenly I'm holding an empty raincoat in my hand. I stare at it. I look up again. The parking lot is full of ghosts, grey and misty.

 

Nothing but smoke and ashes.

 

Again.

 

\----

 

I'd never woken up from nightmares with that catapult terror that you saw in movies or TV. Instead, every time, my eyes snap open, and I think I'm somewhere else for however long it takes for my nerves to unwind and my muscles to relax. It's always been like that, and this time, it wasn't any different.

  
"Jamal?" Jo sat cross-legged in front of me, the pose making her look a lot more solid than she really was. It helped.

  
"Mm. Hi." I managed to move my hand up to the pillow, fingers digging into the soft fabric. The blanket below me wasn't doing a lot to soften the hardwood underneath. That was alright. It was helping me wake up faster.

 

"Which one was it this time?"

 

"Oh, just..." I shrugged. "The hospital."

 

Even in the dark, I could see how her eyes softened. "Any idea why?"

 

I snorted. "Could ask that about a lot of things." I sat up with a groan. "Can you get the light?"

 

"I can't, sorry."

 

"Right." Two years and I still found myself forgetting she was - Yeah. I didn't want to think about that right now. I considered getting up, but then decided just to sit in the dark for a while. The dark didn't bother me. Not most of the time, anyway.

 

"Are you going to be okay?"

 

"Yeah," I lied, or almost lied. I didn't really know what 'okay' meant. Did it mean back to normal? Did it mean up to everybody else's standards of normal? Did it mean having 50% less nightmares than normal? No nightmares at all?

 

I suddenly had the urge to cry. That _was_ unusual. I managed to shove it away, and finally grabbed hold of one of the surrounding boxes, hauling myself to my feet and switching on the light. It was brighter than I expected, and I squinted, covering my eyes.  


"You're going to have to sleep in more than a t-shirt when Nathan moves in, you know," Jo added brightly. I scratched my stomach in response.

 

My pad from yesterday was sitting on the desk, and I stared at it for a few moments, letting the events of the previous day sink in. It hadn't really occurred to me at the time just how much had happened, or how much of it had been weird as _hell._

 

I picked up the pad, flicking through it and pausing at the last page. "Core - Celestial?" was scrawled on it, with "Fire, Earth, Air, Water" scrawled underneath Core, and "Sulfur, Mercury" scribbled underneath Celestial. At the bottom, in big and uncertain letters, was 'SALT'.

 

Me. That was me. At least, according to two mind-readers with hidden agendas and a disturbing Trinity cosplayer with a vanishing act. The worst part was, it was more information than I had about myself currently.

 

Fueled by either nostalgia or self-destructiveness, I opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out the very first thing I'd put in there. Jo was hovering a distance away, but she didn't need to come closer. She knew what it was. The two of us had taken ourselves to the hospital one day five years ago.

 

I snorted. We'd been so excited.

 

I opened the folder. Two pieces of paper sat nestled inside. I knew their contents mostly off by heart. K. Jamal. Date of birth: unknown. Ethnicity: Middle Eastern, probably. Age: three, probably. Same for Johara, except she’d been a six-month-old baby.

 

Still, I found myself scanning the piece of paper, searching for some missing clue, some extra hint. I thought I'd grown out of it, but that one extra word - _salt -_ felt like another arrow. I scoffed at myself. Not so much an arrow as a compass needle, spinning endlessly, pointing nowhere at all. I shoved the folder back into the drawer, probably more roughly than I meant to. I was _over_ it.

 

Instead, I copied down the number from my arm (a little faded now) onto my pad of paper. Then after a moment, I dropped the pad into the drawer as well. I'd found Mr. Chaudhury. My job was done.

 

Speaking of... I glanced over at the clock. 5:30. Too early, still. But I imagined within the next few hours it'd be time to give Mrs. Chaudhury a call.

 

In the meantime -

 

"You're not _done,_ are you?"

 

I didn't bother meeting Jo's eyes. She'd be all flamed up and righteous and accusatory. "I did what she wanted me to do. _And_ what Gurjas wanted. You'll notice he's not here."

 

"But somebody _killed_ him! And - what was all that yesterday?"

 

I paused, not sure what I wanted to say. Despite myself, I looked up - and in her face, I could see the same desperate need for identity written in block letters, over the slightly oversized nose we both had, the high cheekbones, the widow's peak hairline.

 

"Don't you want to _know?_ Aren't you curious at all?"

 

I did. "And what if it's a trick, or a trap, or too big for me to handle?"

  
"Us."

 

"What?"

  
"For _us_ to handle," she said insistently.

 

The anger surged up inside me out of nowhere. It wasn't worth yelling at her. It wouldn't solve anything, or make the dark bubbling cloud in my chest go away.

 

"I'm going for a smoke," I snapped, grabbing a pair of plaid pants from the top of another box and yanking my box of smokes from the top of the desk. I went down the stairs and outside, sitting down on the wooden steps and listening to them creak reassuringly underneath me. The house was old, but that wasn’t saying much - this was the corner of Hintonburg that had escaped the yuppie renos of the rest of this part of Ottawa. With the sun rising behind me, the street was bathed in the half-light of dawn, grey and slightly misty. It’d clear later. The autumn mornings always felt like oncoming storms.

 

I flicked open my cigarette case. Three left, and then I’d have to buy more. With money I didn’t have. The cash Mrs. Chaudhury had given me was going towards next month’s rent. The business I expected to drum up sometime between now and then would pay for food, and until then I was living off the cans and ramen I’d managed to scrounge from my foster family. The boxes in my office were things they’d been trying to get rid of or the things I’d managed to hold onto, some donations from people I’d actually manged to learn the names of in school…

 

I glared at the three cigarettes as if I could conjure a fourth one into existence. Then I closed the case, and rested my head on the banister, eyelids burning with exhaustion and frustration.

 

I didn’t fall asleep, not exactly. But whatever trance I was in was disturbed by my phone vibrating in my hands. A text, labelled “Nathan Beaufort”-

 

Right. Between the murder, the psychics, and fighting with Jo, I’d forgotten about that guy. I opened the message.

 

N: Hey! The lnadlord says its all good and I can move in this week! Is Thursday good?

N: *landlord

 

God. Another person to keep track of.

 

J: yeah sure  
J: dont touch my shit  
N: Are you not going to be there? :questioning:

 

What _was_ a good way to answer that? Nathan was clearly a bit skittish, but I wasn’t sure if he was ready for “socializing makes me want to kill myself”, let alone “that’s ironic, because I can talk to dead people”.

 

Which brought me full circle back to Jo. Great. Thanks, brain.

 

J: i have an inconsistent schedule  
J: dont worry about it

 

 _It would have been great if I was the ghost and not Jo,_ I grumbled to myself, probably a little more morosely than the situation really warranted. All Jo wanted was to talk to people, and all I wanted was to be left alone.

 

I dialed Mrs. Chaudhury’s number into my phone anyway. Best to get it over with.

 

“… _Hello?_ ” Right away, I could hear that she’d been crying, although she was doing her best to hide it.

 

I took a deep breath. “Mrs. Chaudhury. It’s Jamal, Jamal Kaye.”

 

 _“Yes, of course. The, um…”_ She paused. _“The police were here last night. Thank you.”_

 

 _Thank you?_ I’d been expecting screaming. Or coldness. I opened my mouth, trying to figure out how to respond - “I’m sorry. I - I’m sorry. For your loss.”

 

 _“You don’t need to apologize. You aren’t -”_ She sighed. _“You did what you promised. You took my desperate hope and you followed through, and that’s more than I should have asked of any child.”_

 

“Child? Listen -”

 

 _“Don’t start,”_ she chuckled wearily. _“Will you come to his funeral, Jamal? I would be honoured to have you there.”_

 

Now that I _really_ didn’t have a response for. I wondered where on earth Gurjas had hopped off to - I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should ask _his_ permission.

 

Then I caught sight of the figure walking down the street towards me, and my blood ran cold. “…I’d like to think about it, if that’s alright. I’m sorry, Mrs. Chaudhury, I have to go.”

 

_“Oh, that’s alright. Have a good day.”_

 

“Yeah. You too.” I hung up.

 

Mrs. Chaudhury stood in front of me, eyes dark and her hands empty. “Hello, Jamal.”


	8. The Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: Paranoia, gaslighting, manipulation, PTSD triggers and overall unreality

Whoever was standing in front of me, it wasn’t Mrs. Chaudhury. But as I looked at her, my mind struggling to erase the paradox and reassert some sort of reality, I couldn’t place exactly why I was so certain. Perhaps she had an earpiece in. Perhaps I’d hallucinated the phone call. Perhaps I’d just lost some time in there.

 

Or perhaps I just needed to accept what Will and Avery had been trying to tell me yesterday - that the world was darker and stranger and even more uncertain than I knew. Not that it’d been particularly bright to begin with.

 

“Mrs. Chaudhury,” I said after a while, trying to sound normal.

 

“Miss Kaye,” she replied. I made a mental note of that. In the phone call, she’d called me _Jamal._ Even if I’d made up the phone call, I didn’t trust anybody who called me Miss. “I just wanted to stop by and thank you.” She was too calm - too put together. Even the sadness in her voice had a fake undertone to it.

 

On the other hand, I’ve been accused of being paranoid before. I tried to push my discomfort aside. “Don’t worry about it. A job’s a job.” The fact that it was my _first_ actual PI gig didn’t matter, not when my heart was trying to crawl its way out of my throat.

 

“May I speak to you inside?”

 

 _Oh hell no._ I didn’t know who - or what - was standing in front of me, but I didn’t want them in my space. I’d finally gotten a place of my own. I didn’t want them - her? - tainting it. I shrugged. “It’s nice out. Also it’s still a disaster in there.”

 

Was I imagining the flash of uncertainty crossing Mrs. Chaudhury’s face? I couldn’t shake the feeling that the person in front of me had never been inside my apartment before. But - I _couldn_ _’t_ trust my own mind. I couldn’t trust the impulses that told me that everybody was a danger, everybody was a threat, everybody was trying to hurt me.

 

“Well, I suppose.” She sat down next to me on the steps, a little too close. “The police came and talked to me this morning.”

 

 _This morning?_ I checked my phone. It was nearly seven - so it probably wasn't too early for the police to have visited this morning instead of last night, but I had my doubts. Besides - where were her kids? They couldn't be at school yet.

 

And this was all assuming that I'd made up the phone call out of thin air.

 

Anyway - "I figured they had." I tried to keep it as vague as possible, fishing for information. "What'd they say?"

 

She shrugged. It was an oddly young gesture on her - she wasn't old by any means, but old enough not to have the body language of a gangly teenager. I briefly wondered if Willow was behind this, but my own feelings aside, from what I understood, Will's power couldn't let her do something like this.

 

_You don't know anything about it. Perhaps this is Mrs. Chaudhury, with Willow at the wheel. Perhaps it's Willow sitting there next to you, and it's only your mind that's being controlled. You see what she wants you to see -_

 

I dragged myself out of it, my heart racing. It was too easy to find possibilities branching off of possibilities. It never ended, unless you forced yourself to look away.

 

She was talking. "It looks like he was murdered," she said with a sigh, and this time, the tear that fell down her cheek felt real. I wondered what the impostor next to me was really crying over -

 

_-jamal stop it she's mourning her husband everybody mourns differently -_

 

"I - they told me there's no way to know. That it could have been a random mugging - it could have been anything. There's so few murders in Ottawa you think they would spare the time, but..." She shrugged. "Nobody cares about us."

 

_Nobody cares about us._

 

I was so sure, so sure she was a fake. Too many pieces didn't add up. But - but - ugh, I couldn't make myself be certain of anything. Every time I tried, scattered images from my dream flashed across the back of my mind - the weight of Johara in my arms, the sound of the black windbreaker fluttering in the breeze, wrapped tightly around somebody walking away.

 

_Nobody cares about us._

 

I had the distinct sense that I was being manipulated. But I pulled out one of my three cigarettes and my lighter anyway. "What are you saying, then?" I asked, even though I knew exactly what she was asking of me.

 

"I want you to find his murderer."

 

I flicked my lighter on and held it to the end of my cigarette, steadfastly refusing to look at her. "That all?" I couldn't help the sarcasm. "I'm a teenager with computer skills and too much time on her hands."

 

"You're talented. And I don't know how, but you found him. I trust you."

 

"I'm still charging you even if you butter me up."

 

She laughed at that. There was an edge to it, and it was both familiar and more than a little uncomfortable. "I brought plenty of money. Don't worry."

 

"I didn't say yes, yet."

 

“You’re going to. I can see it in your eyes.”

 

I gave in, and looked up at her, the smoke from my cigarette drifting uselessly into the air. Her eyes were a vivid green against her dark skin, and I couldn’t figure out why I was _noticing._ “Yeah, what the hell. I’ll give it a shot. But if I get stabbed, it’s officially your fault.”

 

She snorted at that, and smirked. Again, it looked out of place on Mrs. Chaudhury’s face, below the black headscarf. “Try not getting stabbed, then.” She pushed the canvas bag from her shoulder, then over to me. “That should be enough, if I remember your rates correctly.”

 

Shit. If she wasn’t Mrs. Chaudhury then how - Well, okay. I had a Facebook page. That one wasn’t exactly a challenge to figure out. I peered into the bag, and tried not to choke. Okay. So that was rent taken care of, and money to actually buy _food._ The littlest things make you happy when you’re dirt poor.

 

“I should head off.” She got to her feet, again with that long-limbed gracefulness -

 

“Wait.”

 

“Yes?” She turned to look at me.

 

I took a long drag on my cigarette, then tapped the ash off on the banister. “What’s your name?” I asked.

 

“I don’t -”

 

I didn’t bother looking at her. “Out with it.”

 

“I hired you. That’s all you need to know.”

 

“Mmhm. Any chance you’ll tell me why?”

 

She just gave me another enigmatic smile, then walked off into the misty horizon, turning the corner on Wellington Street and vanishing from sight. I kept my eyes on her until she was out of view. Perhaps it was my stubbornness.

 

But the moment I could be sure she was gone, I dove back into the house, trying not to let the sudden panic in my chest speed up my pace. I locked the door behind me with an exaggerated slowness, and I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.

 

Johara met me at the top of the stairs. “Gurjas came back! He wanted to -”

 

“Give me a moment,” I mumbled, ducking into the bathroom. I felt so nauseous, but as much as my stomach roiled, I managed to keep it together. Instead, I turned on the tap and stuck my head underneath it, cold water rushing over me and clearing my head.

 

“Jamal?”

 

I took my time responding, wiping the water from my face. “Jo. Yeah. I’m -” How did I even begin to explain what had just happened. “I have a new case,” I settled on, with a breathlessness I couldn’t quite make go away. “Give me a minute.”

 

I ducked into my office, ignoring Gurjas’s ghost and mentally filing him away in ‘deal with later’. Then I picked up my phone, sorting through the papers I’d left then giving up and just staring at the faded numbers on my arm. It rang, and rang, and rang, until I was ready to throw it against the wall.

 

“… _Willow Moray, who_ _’s this?_ ”

 

I took a deep breath. “…Will. I think I need your help.” I raised my eyes to Gurjas. He stared back at me in silence, and while I’d been pretty certain that I wasn’t making things up, the look in his eyes - the sad confusion hiding behind the cold mask he kept putting up - was what sold it for me.

 

Whoever had come to see me today, it had not been Chandra Chaudhury, because Chandra Chaudhury’s husband was dead, and her impostor didn’t know what grief looked like.


	9. Once More For Clarity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience! GIQ is officially off hiatus! To see the beautiful art for this chapter, please check out the blog at ghosts-in-quicksilver.tumblr.com.
> 
> In other news, while this has been on hiatus, I've been playing around with the universe in fandom! Check out my work Little Homes to see Shiro and Keith from Voltron in what I consider a 'sandbox run' for the Alkimia Verse. 
> 
> Trigger warnings: PTSD triggers, anger/very mild violence, mind-reading/intrusion, death

Trigger warnings: PTSD triggers, anger/very mild violence, mind-reading/intrusion, death

“Help?” Will’s voice was slurred, and she cleared her throat. “Uh, who is this? Like, great opening, but I just woke up, man.”

I closed my eyes, sat down on my spinny chair, and rubbed my temple in frustration. “…Jamal? Jamal Kaye?”

“…Yeah, not ringing a bell. Are you a telemarketer?”

Wow. I mean, I was too busy being furious to be scared anymore, which was a step up. “Are you actually this stupid or am I going to have to go hit somebody again -”

“Cool it, cool it,” she laughed. “Okay, you’re the chick from last night.”

I groaned, and lowered my forehead to my desk. “Don’t say it like that. God, even when you’re on the phone you’re fucking with my head.” Beat. “You, uh. You can’t read minds through the phone, right…?”

“If I say yes, can I keep screwing with you-?”

“This is kind of serious.”

Will cleared her throat again. “Sorry. Yep. So you’re not calling me for a date?”

“I - No!” I debated hanging up, and - just barely - managed to resist. Apparently she was even more annoying during daylight hours. “I - you - you and Avery were talking about a lot of things last night. And…” I trailed off. Words were hard.

“You want the proper welcome wagon.”

“No! I’m not joining your secret society!”

She snorted. “It’s not a secret society. For one, we don’t have a handshake.”

“I just want to know what the fuck is going on. Can you meet me somewhere? There’s a Starbucks over on Wellington or something -”

“No offense, but I’d rather stay private. You live near Wellington, right?”

I hadn’t decided whether to be offended or not. “Yes. Is that a problem?”

“Yeeeeah… You’re stuck in the hipster neighborhood.”

I was suddenly very aware that I could see the Elmvale Oyster House from my window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, probably unconvincingly. “That’s - that’s not the point.” I was so glad she was taking this seriously. “I don’t particularly want you in my house.”

“Isn’t your house your office? ‘Jamal Kaye, Private Investigator -”

“Are you - did you google me?”

“It’s a nice Facebook page. Very professional looking. You need some testimonials, though. Like, ‘she found my neighbor’s cat so quickly, ten out of ten’!”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, and turned around, catching Gurjas’s eye. Gurjas. Right. There was a point to all this. “Just get your ass over here,” I grumbled. I hung up on her with a cathartic click (although it wasn’t nearly as good as slamming down the old hand-helds) then glared at Johara and Gurjas, who were studiously looking anywhere but at me. “What? What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Johara said in an oddly squeaky voice.

The phone rang again. I picked it up -

“Where do you live, genius? Wellington’s a long-ass street, and it was dark last night.”

I stared at my feet, then gave her my address with a grumble. Which wasn’t even on Wellington.

Then I hung up. I wasn’t going to be denied the last word.

—

She showed up more than half an hour later, and my first sign of her was a cheerful, “Knock knock!” from outside. I groaned, and went to let her in -

“Are you sure about this?”

I glanced over at Gurjas. It was the first time he’d spoken in a while, and I’d forgotten how gravelly his voice was. “…No. But I’m not sure of anything.”

“You don’t have to get involved anymore.” He sounded almost… embarrassed? “I - came to thank you. But you should move on.”

I gave him a smile that was almost genuine. “So should you. But I don’t think either of us can do that without answers.”

He glowered at me. “I have all the answers I need. I don’t want you dying in search of yours.”

“Suit yourself. I’m stubborn, I’m curious and I’m stupid. It’s a terrible combination.” I would have probably brushed off the ‘dying’ thing a little more if he wasn’t, well, floating in front of me all dead as a warning sign. All the same, it didn’t deter me quite as much as it should have. Concern for my own skin was maybe… four, five on my priority list?

I went downstairs and opened the door.

“There you are. I thought you were going to keep me waiting.” She pushed her way inside, handing me one of the fountain drinks she was holding. “I got you a soda.”

“…Uh. Okay.” I took it, and glanced up at her. She was a little less intimidating in daylight, I had to say - I could see the pink streaks in her hair, and the butterflies in her earlobes. She hadn’t gotten any less frustratingly tall, but that was life as a hobbit. “Uh -” I just pointed upstairs. I wasn’t entirely sure how to open the conversation.

She snorted, and climbed the stairs. “Enjoy the view.”

“The - Oh, for -” She was wearing a miniskirt, black with lace on the bottom. “I don’t do that.”

“What, appreciate nice legs?”

…They were nice legs, I had to admit. Aesthetically. But not the point. “I meant ogling people randomly,” I mumbled, but she probably didn’t hear it.

“Ooooh, pretty skirt!” commented Johara from above, and I glared up at her.

“Thank you!” Will commented airily.

Great. I’d forgotten. Jo wasn’t just my own personal heckler anymore. I grumbled something incoherently to myself, then followed Will upstairs…then grabbed her before she could go exploring the rest of the house.

“Office is this way.”

“But -”

“My roommate isn’t even moved in yet.”

“Is she cute?”

“He’s tall, awkward and otherwise a total blank. Please stop asking me questions.”

Will took a sip of her soda, but it didn’t hide the little smirk on her face. I just pushed her towards my office with a huff.

“Wow, this place is a shithole. I thought my apartment was bad -”

“I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”

“Technically, you invited me.”

I was already getting a headache. “I haven’t even  _unpacked_. Can I get the home reno commentary once I’ve actually settled in?”

“Fine, fine.” She waggled her hand. “So what do you need?”

I sat down at my desk and opened my computer, glaring at her a little over the top of the screen. She was so… _chipper_. But I hadn’t forgotten what kind of abilities she had.

I pulled up the image I needed. It was one from Facebook, nice and clear. “This is Gurjas Chaudhury. I found his body in the Lebreton Flats yesterday.” I turned the computer over to Will - and oh, I could see the look on her face. Instant recognition. “You know him?” I asked. I might not have been a mind-reader but the change in mood was obvious.

“Uh - only in passing. How’d you get involved?” It wasn’t a denial. She was too smart for that. But her hand strayed up her arm anyway, fiddling with the sleeve of her t-shirt in sudden discomfort.

“I’m a private investigator-”

“You’re seventeen. Don’t get cute with me.” There was a rough edge to her voice. “You’re supposed to be chasing down lost bikes and investigating shoplifted candy bars.”

“Well, I got stuck with this instead. Are you going to start giving me answers?” She’d probably plucked my age from my head at some point. I wasn’t particularly comfortable with that, either.

“I don’t  _have_ any. I thought you wanted the welcome wagon.”

“I told you, I don’t give a toss about your secret society. All i want to know is which of you fucks can disguise yourselves as other people.”

Will froze, blue eyes wide. Then her mouth twisted into a humourless smirk. “Right. That’d be Mercuries. They’re the shapeshifters.”

“Shapeshifters.” I kept my voice steady, even as i felt my heart beat a sudden taboo against my ribs, quaking and frightened. At least she’d answered me.

“I can feel you freaking out -”

I slammed my hand against the desk and was both gratified and ashamed to see the way she jumped in her chair. She was paying attention now, at least. “How do I keep you the  _fuck_ out of my head?”

“By keeping that temper of yours in check,” she drawled.

Temper. Right. “I’m surrounded by cryptic assholes who think straight answers are too much work. I’ll calm down when I feel like it.”

“If it’s any comfort, nothing about me is straight.”

The line took me enough by surprise that I laughed, although it was abrupt and bitter. I buried my hand in my hair, covering my eyes and trying to let the new information settle in. Shapeshifters. Fucking hell. I was getting commissioned to solve somebody’s murder by a shapeshifter who’d taken Mrs. Chaudhury’s form - what, just to fuck with me? It was hard not to feel that way. “Okay,” I breathed. “So shapeshifters, mind readers, and…whatever I am.”

“A medium?”

“I’m not using that word.”

“Shame. Loud weirdo talking to dead people is  _such_ a mouthful.”

Johara snorted in laughter behind me, and I wouldn’t have minded so much if I didn’t know perfectly well that Will could hear her too. “Laugh all you want,” I shot back at her, “She’s sassing you too.”

“Yeah, but it’s funny.”

“One day I’ll make you  _pay_ for how much you stab me in the back.” I sighed, and pushed the palm of my hand into my eyes, wondering if I should tell Will about the shapeshifter. “Okay. So - rewind. You know Gurjas.”

At the sound of his name, Gurjas drifted curiously through the wall - and blanched, as much as a ghost  _could_. It was confirmation that Will wasn’t just talking out of her ass. They  _knew_ each other. I didn’t acknowledge him, and if he didn’t say anything…well, I didn’t know how this stuff worked. But I could pay attention.

“Only in passing,” Will mumbled, showing no awareness that Gurjas was there. “He’s out in Nepean area. Bayshore? I dunno. Avery and I kind of go everywhere.” She scratched at her ear, obviously uncomfortable.

“You and Avery? Are you two-” I wiggled my hand awkwardly, trying to find the right word.

“God, no.” Will pulled a face, then laughed, the tension falling from her shoulders. “What, are you jealous?”

“No. I was just asking.”

She snorted, then pulled some of her hair out of her face where it had fallen out of her ponytail, a sad smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. “I was hoping he was okay. I guess not.”

Gurjas still hadn’t said anything, but his stony masquerade was starting to falter. I wondered if he’d let himself even  _think_ about being dead yet, or if this was the first time it’d started to sink in. Then -

“You make it sound like he was in danger.”

Will  _definitely_ twitched that time. But I must have let too much slide, and I still didn’t know how to lock down my head completely. “Are  _you_ in danger?”

“You sound so concerned.”

“If you are it’s probably your own fault, so I’m not sure concerned is the right word.” She tightened her ponytail with a smirk. “You seem to throw yourself into stupid situations.”

“You’ve met me once.”

“Yes, and you were hitting my mentor in the face.”

“I don’t know if I  _regret_ that.”

“Yes, you do.”

I - just barely - resisted the urge to slam the desk again. “This isn’t going anywhere if you don’t tell me how to  _stop you doing that_.”

She blinked, then shrugged. “I’m sorry.” It sounded mostly sincere. “Avery has an easier time just not picking things up.”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you actually want to know or is this step two of your weird ass-backwards interrogation style?”

…Dammit. I wished I had a defense against the interrogation thing. “I do actually want to know.” I left out the part where knowledge was power and/or a defense against whatever bullshit was coming my way.

“Avery and I can  _do_ the same thing, but we do it differently.” She was still fidgeting with her hair, and I stuck my hand between my knees to stop myself from drumming my fingers on the desk. She was nervous enough. “Avery senses things, like… tendrils? That’s how they described it last time. They pick up on things but it’s easier for them to ignore things, although that came with practice.”

“Tendrils. That’s not creepy.”

“Look, describing brain shit is hard.”

“And you?”

“I actually  _hear_ things. I can’t  _stop_ myself from hearing whatever’s rattling around people’s heads. It’s not like I dig for it. It’s just… there. As obvious as your voice. Just quieter.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “That’s… frightening. Can you tell the difference?”

“Pft, yeah. It’s not identical.”

“So how do I keep you out?”

“You have to think of something consistently. Like a brick wall, or a nursery rhyme.”

Well, there was only one option for that.  _Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down -_

“It’s not too late for me to kill you,” Will seethed. “You couldn’t think of anything-” Then she stopped, head cocked.

“What?” I could feel my heart skip a beat already. “What’s -”

Her hand slapped over my mouth, and my nose was filled with the lingering scent of nail polish. “Hush.” Then in my head -  _Somebody else is here. Another elemental. Follow me._


	10. The Back and Forth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for violence, blood, mind control, death, sex shaming/anti-sex-worker sentiment.

“Jo,” said Will in a low, urgent voice, “check outside the door.”

Jo nodded, face drawn and worried -

“Did she just nod?” Will asked me, and I rolled my eyes, nodding. “Okay.”

Jo vanished through the wall. Gurjas had poofed the moment things had gotten tense, although I couldn’t blame him. Will hadn’t ever picked up he was there, and hearing about yourself was bizarre for anybody.

 _What_ _’s going on?_ I thought as loudly as I could manage, and Will winced a little.

_You don_ _’t need to yell. Just, uh - remember how I asked if you were in danger?_

_Yes. You made it sound like a normal question oh my god there_ _’s somebody after me WHAT THE HELL._

_Your train of thought is hilarious,_ she drawled.

_Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you -_ It was probably a little panicky and out of tune but it was what I had.

Johara stuck her head back through the wall. “I don’t recognize them,” she said nervously.

“What do they  _look_ like?”

“Uh, red hair, really tall-?”

“Shit.” Will tugged me to my feet.  _Jamal, where does that window go?_

_Outside? The back yard? Neverland?_

_I_ _’ll take it._

_We_ _’re on the second floor!_

She shoved the window open and stuck her head outside.  _There_ _’s dirt, and a bush. You’ll live._

“Who even  _is_ this person?” I asked.

“Annoying,” Will grumbled - then the window snapped shut, almost biting off her fingers. She yanked her hands back, shooting a snarl over her shoulder.

“Your worst nightmare,” came a purr from the stairs. It was ridiculously overdramatic, and especially paired with Will’s frustration rather than fear, I had to suppress rolling my eyes.

I turned around. Whoever this was, it wasn’t Kiera, which was some of my paranoia taken care of. She was tall, like Jo had said, but my sister hadn’t mentioned the bizarre black leather get-up that criss-crossed Lila’s chest and dropped down in something that I thought was _…sort_ of a dress? She looked like an off-duty dominatrix.

“Lila,” Will groaned. “What do you  _want?_ ”

“Willow,” she preened back. “What a  _surprise_ to find you here. Have you expanded your clientele?”

“I will  _hurt you_ ,” she hissed back. I didn’t really understand the comment, but I didn’t really have time to think about it, not with Will’s eyes flashing. Instead, I quietly stepped back. This was obviously a fight between the two of them. Nothing to do with me.

“I’m here for the new Salt girl.”

Wait. What now?

“Sorry, what?”

“You can’t  _have_ her,” Will shot back, and I squinted at her. This was uncomfortable. The last time I’d had people fighting over me was - well - um - never, actually.

Lila’s red lips formed a perfect pout. “Shouldn’t we ask  _her?_ What’s your name, darling?”

 _Don_ _’t look into her eyes,_ came the warning in my head. I wasn’t sure how much to listen to Will, but I could at least be smart. I focused on Lila’s lips instead. “Jamal. My name’s Jamal.”

“Jamal. What a nice name. I need your help.”

“Your  _help?_ ” Despite myself, I glanced up at her eyes - then away again. I didn’t trust how much they shone. I’d seen a lot of weird shit in the last few days, and I decided to trust Will on this one.

She smiled sweetly, flipping her hair over her bare, freckled shoulder. “I need somebody around who can help me calm people down. Especially in bad situations.”

I glanced over at Will. Another thing I hadn’t been told. “And what does that have to do with Salt?”

“…Oh sweetie, you’re  _new._ Aren’t you?”

“Stop calling me sweetie,” I mumbled. “And yes.”

Will sighed. “Salts can talk to the dead. But your secondary ability is that when elementals spin out, you can… get them back under control.”

I snorted. “That doesn’t sound like me. I start fights, not end them.”

“It doesn’t have to, dear. So why don’t you come with me and help me-”

“You’re full of shit,” Will interrupted, voice harsh.

“ _Willow._ ”

Will turned her back, yanking at the window and trying to get it open again - then she flew backwards across the room, some invisible force yanking her away. I sprang for her, but the same force hit me in the chest, and I fell into the desk, the sharp edge hitting me in the middle of the back. I struggled to stop the dizziness, my entire body suddenly aching. Lila’s hands were outstretched in front of her, and her pout turned into a cruel smile.

“Stop getting in the way,” she taunted at Will. “It seems like  _every_ time I turn around you’re messing with  _my_ territory. She’s on my turf, which means she’s -”

“Nobody belongs to you, you uppity bitch,” Will grumbled. “And your ‘turf’ ends at Wellington.”

“What’s a city block between friends?”

I stumbled to my feet, digging in my pocket for my knife. I flicked it open, but it jerked out of my hand, coming alive and then twirling slowly in the air.

“A knife? That’s rather bad-mannered.” The point of my knife turned to face me. “Maybe I should teach you a lesson -”

“ _Stop,_ ” came Will’s voice. Lila froze, but the knife kept turning, the dim light sending sparkles off of the dull blade. I looked over at Will - her head was bent, hair falling over her face, but I could see the focused look in her blue eyes, cold and sharp as ice. “ _Drop the knife._ ”

The knife clattered to the ground, leaving a small nick in the wooden floor.

“ _Turn and leave._ _”_

Nothing happened. Will chewed on her lip, and opened her mouth - then the knife lifted from the ground and drove straight for her face.

_“STOP!”_

The knife didn’t stop - but it changed course, just nicking the edge of Will’s arm and pulling a cry of pain from her lips. It snapped me out of my shocked daze - I ran for Lila while she was distracted, then ducked and kicked at her high-heeled feet. She fell forward with a snarl, one of the heels snapping, and I winced at the dull thud as her face met the landing.

“Don’t feel bad,” Will grumbled. “She’s horrible.”

I backed away from her as she slowly got to her feet. “I think you should leave my house now,” I said with a confidence I really didn’t feel.

“Fine,” she spat. “I know when I’m not wanted.” She got to her feet, dusting off her black pants and corset, then stalked down the stairs, wavering as she wiped some of the blood off her face.

The moment she was gone, Will sat down on the floor with a heavy ‘thunk’.

“Are you okay?” Johara asked.

“I’ve had worse,” she grumbled. The nick in her arm wasn’t deep, but there was blood welling up slowly between her fingers. I grabbed a dishtowel that was hanging over the railing and knelt down next to her, wrapping it around her arm.

“Is that okay?”

She twisted it tighter. “That’ll do. I should probably check in with Avery.”

“Alright. Thanks for, well. Today.”

“Oh, no no no. You’re coming with me.”

I was about to disagree, then - “Yes. Yes I am. Because what the  _hell_ are you not telling me?”

“She’s trying to respect me,” said Gurjas from behind me, and I started with a yelp.

“Oh, what, you leave when things get tough and show up again once the weird woman’s gone?”

“I was here the whole time. Willow wants to respect that I kept my abilities secret. But I was a Salt like you.” His eyes shone slightly at that, and for a second, he looked  _younger._ I didn’t know how or why, but ghosts as a whole were still a mystery to me.

“And you didn’t tell me fuck all. You’re really not winning me over.” I couldn’t help the bitterness.  _Nobody_ was telling me anything.

Will stared up in Gurjas’s general area. “So  _you_ pulled her into this?”

“Not on purpose. I just wanted peace.”

Will sighed. “I guess there was nobody else.”

“Nobody else? Well there must be -” I paused. It was starting to click together in my head, and I didn’t like it. “…Will. Why was Lila coming to  _me?_ Where are all the other Salts? There’s - there’s lots of them. Right?”

There was silence from both of them, and I glanced up at Johara, who stared back at me, coming to the same horrible conclusion I was.

“They’re dead,” Will murmured. “There’s you, and one other. There’s only two Salts left.”


	11. Interlude One: NACH VORN

Once upon a time, there were two little girls, who lived in a house in the middle of the woods with their father. One day, he went into town as usual, and came back with a wife. The wife did not like the daughters; the daughters did not particularly like her either. Still, they made an uneasy peace with her.

Until, one day, the cold came. It was a quick cold, but a biting one - and it killed every fresh crop, every growing field, every unprotected living thing it touched. There was no harvest - and no food.

Things got worse and worse. The larders emptied out, and the girls went to bed hungry every night. When Younger Sister cried from the pain in her stomach, Older Sister sang quiet songs to her, and wove stories of their true mother. Neither of them remembered her; but where there was no memory or truth to be had, fairytale was enough.

One morning, their father stirred them from their beds, and told them to follow him into the woods. They were going to gather firewood, he said - but before they left, the birds chirped to Younger Sister, “Take heed! Take heed! Fill your pockets with stones! Leave a trail!”

Younger Sister did so, and as their father led them deeper and deeper among the towering trees, she trailed the stones behind them, white and pearly against the dark loam of the forest floor. Then, she looked up - and their father was gone. They were lost. But Younger Sister found the trail of stones, and guided them back to their cottage. Their father’s face was filled with mixed relief and shame, but they could see the fury in their stepmother’s face. So the next morning, they were awoken even earlier, and herded out to the forest too fast to keep with them anything more than a crust of bread. Younger Sister crumbled it behind her to leave a trail; however, when once again, their father vanished and they were left alone in the forest, she turned behind her to see nothing but the birds eating the crumbs she’d left.

“Why do you betray me like this?” she cried. But it was too late. They were lost.

Older Sister closed her eyes. She turned in a circle, trying to feel the winds, the earth under her feet. Then she opened her eyes, and took Younger Sister’s hand.

“What are we going to do?” Younger Sister asked.

Older Sister looked down at Younger Sister. They were all each other had left in the world. Even if they could make it back to their home, she realized, it wasn’t home any more. They were no longer welcome.

“Survive,” she said. She squeezed Younger Sister’s hands, and strode into the dark.

There was nowhere else to go but forward.


	12. A Little Fucked Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for smoking, PTSD, mild violence, trauma stuff.
> 
> You can find this on ghosts-in-quicksilver.tumblr.com, or my other writing at moonlitwaterwriting.tumblr.com!

I’d tried to quit smoking something like five times, and I was on try number six. I only had three cigarettes left - two now, I guessed - but desperate times called for desperate measures, and after dealing with the last few days with what I thought was an _exceptional_ amount of grace - I needed a goddamn smoke.

 

Now if my hands would stop _shaking._ It was cold out here, on the steps of my house. That was my excuse. My thumb kept slipping off the wheel of my lighter.

 

“Here,” murmured Will. She took the lighter from my hands, flicking it on and then holding the flame to the end of my cigarette. It was starting to get dark outside. Where had the day gone? I couldn’t even remember half of it. The shapeshifter. Calling Will. Lila.

 

"We should talk about that Mercury that keeps rolling around your head," Will said quietly, and I jerked away. She flipped the lighter closed. "Sorry. It's - pretty loud."

 

I tried to relax. She was trying. God knows I hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. "...Is..." I swallowed. Paranoia versus good sense. Paranoia _was_ good sense. "Why was Avery outside my house that night? When I went to LeBreton Flats?" I tried to keep something rolling around my head, to maintain _some_ element of privacy. _Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper how the fuck does this go again? Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb -_ Realistically, I should just talk to Will about it. But I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that all these freaks (don’t call them freaks you’re one too) showing up at once couldn’t be a coincidence.

 

The look in Will’s eyes wasn’t helping the paranoia, either. She kept looking at the ground, counting grains in the asphalt. “They keep track of people they think might be, y’know. Gifted.”

 

"Gifted. That's a new word for it."

 

"Eh, there's lots of words for it." She chuckled lightly. There was a sadness to it. _Cursed, more like it,_ my brain supplied. Haunted. “Avery is - look, forget what Lila said. Lila’s a self-centered prick. Avery looks out for people.” Will lit her own cigarette, although from the face she made while taking her first puff on it, she wasn’t a big smoker.

 

“Don’t feel obliged on my account. It’s bad for you.”

 

“So’s being trans,” she replied with a wry cynicism. “I’m keeping you company. Anyway. You were asking about Avery.”

 

I paused. “Are they actually a cab driver?”

 

“Pfft. Yes.”

 

“…For real.”

 

“For real! Licensed and everything.”

 

I stared at Will. She didn’t _look_ like she was fucking with me…this time. “They can control minds and they drive a taxi.”

 

“We don’t _control minds._ We just…suggest things. Strongly.”

 

I snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.” The cigarette was helping. I didn't feel so much like I wanted to cry. "So they just like doing it? Being a cab driver?"

 

“I mean, yeah. They like helping people. And it’s not like we can just go get any job we want. It doesn’t work like that.”

 

“Like hell it doesn’t.”

 

“Not if we wanna be _good_ people,” she retorted. “Besides, I can only control so many people at once. Tricking one person into thinking I can do, I don’t know, taxes or something is one thing. Tricking a whole corporation is quite another.”

 

 I supposed she had a point. Mind control had scary implications. Then I frowned, tucking one of my hands in my armpit to ward off the cold and cocking my head at her with a nervous look. "So even before you could hear Jo - you knew what I was?"

 

"Avery more than me. It's something you develop with time. Apparently.”

 

“Ah. So you’re almost as new to this at me.”

 

“Not _exactly._ Just, kinda new to being decent about it.”

 

That explained a lot, including the tender way she said Avery’s name. I took my cigarette from my mouth, lowering it down by my thigh so I could think. "...How'd you meet Avery? You two seem pretty close. And you already said you're not dating."

 

Will brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, flicking my lighter on and off and sending orange patterns flickering over her face. "I can probably tell you another time. Like I said. They like helping people.”

 

I couldn’t help but be a little skeptical. “It’s not _that_ selfless. Is it?”

 

“Maybe not.”

 

“I can - what, stabilize people? What does that mean? I’m not a bloody therapist, and I’m a _lousy_ medium.”

 

She laughed, then shivered a little in the cold. “God, I should have worn pants.”

 

“Probably.”

 

“Don’t sass me. Uh, stabilization is - basically, powers are a pain in the ass. Lila’s an Earth elemental. She can - well, you saw. She can move things with her mind.”

 

“Including people?”

 

“Yeah. Which is my least favourite bit.”

 

I decided I wasn’t regretting the smoke. Not after getting thrown around like a ragdoll by somebody with psychic powers. I took another deep puff of my cigarette, then coughed as I got a lungful of ash - okay, maybe that part tasted a bit of regret. “You’re still dodging around what stabilization is.”

 

“Our powers aren’t as stable as they look. They react to our emotions, how we’re feeling, how we’re doing. And sometimes they get a little out of control.” Her breath came out of her mouth as smoke in the cold air. “So, yeah. Stabilization is how we can reel things back.”

 

My heart dropped into my stomach. I didn’t want to think about what ‘out of control’ meant. _Out of control mind-control powers_ _… “_ Earth. You said Earth. There’s Fire?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Out of control fire powers.”

 

Will swallowed. “Yeah.”

 

“And - and how often does -” I tried to stop squeaking. Tried to get the image of fire out of my head. _Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Sulfur, Salt, Mercury._ “This is a normal thing.”

 

“Normal-ish? Usually there’s more Salts around to help us out. And for the core elementals they all stabilize each other so it’s not as bad.”

 

“This is - This is a lot.” I couldn’t breathe. “So Sulfur a-and Mercury, the shapeshifter ones - they _need_ Salt elementals. To - to stop being, what, crazy?”

 

Will flinched a bit at that. “It’s not that simple.”

 

“How often does it happen? _How often?_ ”

 

“It’s kind of a prerequisite to be a little fucked up. So, uh, pretty often.”

 

I dropped the cigarette and ground it out under my heel, storming back towards the house.

 

“Jamal-”

 

“I’m _not a therapist!_ _”_ I shot back.

 

“It’s not like that-”

 

“What does prerequisite even _mean?_ ”

 

“It’s how we get the stupid abilities in the first place!”

 

I paused, hands slowly closing into fists in the air. Then I turned on my heel, glaring back at Will. “ _What._ ”

 

“You hadn’t figured that out?”

 

“I have met _five_ people with weird superhuman abilities so far, and had extended conversations with two of them,” I growled through gritted teeth. “Now what’s this about how we have to be ‘a little fucked up’?”

 

Will took a step backwards. “Er, you’re not going to start with the punching again, are you?”

 

“That _depends._ Do I _have_ to-?”

 

“Trauma,” she sighed, her eyes fixed on mine with a flicker of - I wasn’t sure if it was uncertainty, fear, or just the trepidation of telling me something she knew I didn’t want to hear, reflecting my own raging emotions back at me. “We get our powers because of trauma.”

 

I could feel something splintering in my chest. Who knows why. Maybe it was just because I didn’t want to think about it - the horrible little question that had been chasing me around my whole life. _Why._ Why can you see ghosts? Why do the dead cluster to you? Why are you still talking to your sister years after burying her?

 

I didn’t want to know.

 

“Get out.”

 

“I’m already outside -”

 

“ _I don_ _’t care._ ”

 

I stalked back inside, and slammed the door behind me, the impact shaking the doorframe. I didn’t _have_ trauma. I just had a stupid shitty life but it wasn’t - it wasn’t trauma if you didn’t _know_ anything else. It didn’t count. It didn’t count.

 

“Jamal?”

 

Jo was in front of me, grey eyes wide. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to _figure it out._ I didn’t want to feel bad about slamming the door on Will or about - any of this.

 

I sat down on the stairs with a dull thud, rubbing my eyes and trying not to cry. “Yeah?”

 

“It’s pretty cold outside. Are you sure you want to leave her out there?”

 

“Don’t lecture me,” I grumbled. “She can go home.”

 

Jo raised an eyebrow at me. I pretended not to see it, and leant my head onto my knees. Time passed. I wasn’t sure how much.

 

“Jamal,” she said quietly.

 

“I know,” I murmured back. I really was going to cry. Jo was my conscience. If she’d just died and I’d never been able to talk to her again -

 

I opened the door. Will was sitting on the porch steps, shivering and toying with the loose end of the dishrag still tied around her arm. “You’re not gonna leave, huh?” I said, unable to hide the smile. I probably would have preferred it if she _had_ gone home, but…

 

“I would, but I would prefer it if nobody killed you while I wasn’t looking.”

 

I could appreciate that. “…I don’t have a couch. I don’t even have a bed.”

 

“That’s fine. I’m pretty much nocturnal anyway.”

 

I leaned against the doorframe with a sigh. “Do you like horror movies?”

 

“Hell yeah.” She got to her feet. I couldn’t tell if the red on her cheeks was from the cold or if she’d been crying. “Wait, you can’t afford a bed, but you have Netflix?”

 

“Who needs Netflix? I have the Internet.”

 

“I like how you think.”

 

I caught Jo’s eye as Will came back in, and she gave me a thumbs up. I flapped at her with a scowl. I didn’t need her teasing me. I had a friend. It was a start.


	13. Avoiding the Question

My house was quiet in the mornings. I guess part of that was me getting used to living on my own – even though I had a roommate moving in, when was it, tomorrow? – it wasn’t a house filled with somebody else’s family. I was  _supposed_ to be here. And as a result, instead of voices waking me up at odd times or somebody else’s phone ringing, I opened my eyes to a blissful  _quiet._

Will was propped up on the far wall, and I blinked, clearing my eyes and gazing at her for a bit. She didn’t seem to mind the uncomfortable sleeping position at all, even in her miniskirt. She’d let her ponytail down last night, but there were still bobby pins strewn throughout her kinked and slightly frizzy hair.

I didn’t remember the last time I’d actually spent time with another human being that wasn’t dead or somebody on sufferance. I’d actually enjoyed myself. Which meant –

Which meant  _danger._ Which meant I had to not let my guard down.

Speaking of guard – I hadn’t realized I could feel his presence, but I could tell that Gurjas was gone. I wasn’t sure where he’d gone – home, possibly, or his workplace, any or all of the places he’d hung around when he was alive. Anywhere would have been better than here, with a girl he didn’t know who was trying and failing to catch his murderer.

Still, I’d gotten used to him, even with his stony silences and his refusal to cave to anything or admit to things. Even being a Salt. There was a stubbornness to it I had to appreciate, even as much as it infuriated me that everybody was keeping secrets from me.

Speaking of which –

I got to my feet as quietly as I could and stared down at Will with a lump in my throat I didn’t know whether to acknowledge or not. ‘Didn’t know’ seemed to be the theme lately. I didn’t know if I should be believing her about being in danger. Lila hadn’t seemed  _that_ dangerous until my knife had ended up in Will’s arm. But I couldn’t see how keeping me in the dark kept me any safer, and there was so much I didn’t yet understand, so much that I was trying not to second-guess into oblivion-

Me being in danger though?

Somehow I couldn’t see Will lying about that.

Maybe I was just going soft.

I shrugged on my jean jacket. It was light outside already. I’d slept in later than usual – but that was a good thing. Whatever nightmares I’d had were groggy and clouded, unclear beyond the faint feeling of unease that I just accepted as a constant companion. Then I knelt carefully by Will and picked up the phone by her side, keeping the image of a brick wall in my head. She was asleep, but I couldn’t be too careful.

“What are you doing?”

I knew what Johara was asking, but I avoided it anyway. “I’m going out to hand out some more resumes.”

“You did most of them online.”

“Yeah, and now I’m doing some more in person.”

“You need to steal Will’s phone for that?”

I sighed, walking into the kitchen and closing the door behind me so Will wouldn’t wake up and overhear. Johara just phased through the door, glaring at me with bright eyes. “Don’t ignore me,” she snarled.

I put the phone down on the kitchen table, slumping down onto one of the battered wooden chairs, which creaked under my weight. It’d been here when I moved in, and I glanced up at Johara, whose eyes were sparking with disappointed rage. “She’s not telling me everything. I’m not going to follow a stranger around blindly when-”

“When you could totally betray their trust instead?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Jo sighed, tight curls falling over her face. She was more solid than usual today; sometimes getting angry did that to her, and right now I almost felt like I could reach forward and touch her. Her feet touched the floor. Her hair ended in points instead of slight fudges of mist. But –

But she was still dead.

“Look, you don’t have to  _trust_ her. But hear her out. You keep not letting her talk.”

“I’m letting her talk.”

“No, you’re not. You keep interrupting her or freaking out over little details. And you  _still_ haven’t told me who you were talking to the other day that freaked you out so badly, so honestly, you don’t have a  _whole_ lot of room to whine about people not telling you things!”

I could have answered her, or yelled at her, or even acknowledged that she wasn’t wrong. Instead, I picked up the pile of resumes and Will’s phone, and walked away.

“Jamal.”

I didn’t respond.

“Jamal,  _don’t ignore me!_ ”

I didn’t feel good about it. But I kept walking away anyway. I knew what would happen if I turned back and apologized and gave Will her phone back – I’d be up all night, wracked with paranoia I couldn’t understand, couldn’t get a hold on. This wasn’t even about Gurjas anymore. It’d become about  _me,_ and that meant I had to chase down the answers and wring their necks and make the little restless voice inside of me stop.

Basically, Jo could hate me now, or she could hate me later. Pick a door.

_It’s kind of a prerequisite to be a little fucked up._

Not that door. That door was staying shut.

I left, head kept firmly down –

-which meant I rammed it firmly into the chest of the guy who was standing at the door, fist up as if he was trying to knock. “Ow!” I tottered backwards. “The  _fuck?_ ”

“… Hi.”

I blinked away the little birdies from my eyes. “ _Nathan?_ I said Thursday!”

“It’s Thursday!”

“It’s  _Tuesday._ ”

“Is it?”

“All day, dude. Go ho-” I glanced down at the paisley suitcase he was dragging behind him. “…Really.”

“I thought it was Thursday!”

Hell no. I had what was about to be a  _very_ pissed off psionic upstairs, and I didn’t know how Will was going to react to her phone getting stolen, but I doubted it was going to be good. “Stick that in here.” I grabbed the suitcase, shoved it against the stairs, then turned Nathan forcibly around and steered him off the porch. Then I turned around and locked the door behind me.

“Er…” Nathan peered over my shoulder, as if staring at my lock would tell him something. “Where are we going?”

I glanced down at the stack of resumes in my hand, then turned to him with an exaggerated and  _very_ fake grin. “The second half of your roommate interview! While I hand these out.”

“Resumes? I thought you were a private investigator.”

“Part time. I – Hey, I’ll ask the questions here.”

“See? You’re great at it.”

“Shut  _up._ ”

I was going to pay for this later. Either from Will, or from my sister – but either way, I’d bought myself time to get into Will’s phone and get some more answers.

Speaking of which… I glanced down at the lockscreen as I walked down the street, and called to mind what I’d seen from Will last night. I could almost remember it. Across, then down.

I tried once. No luck. Once more. Still locked.

Across two, then diagonal –

There was a beep, and Will’s phone let me in. It opened onto a texting app, and there wasn’t anything on the screen other than the name of the contact on the top –

“Ophis?” I murmured.

“What?”

“Uh, never mind.”

Then something appeared on the screen. A message.

**OPHIS: You’re late.**

I stared at it, uncomprehending – then yanked my notebook out of my pocket, jotting down a new word on a fresh page.

OPHIS.

Will was reporting back to somebody.

I was right.


	14. Chasing the Threads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: past implied mentalism/mental ableism, paranoia, unreality, CSA reference, racism

I wasn’t upset. Of course. Just – resigned, was the word, I guess. I stuffed the phone back into my pocket, cleared my throat, and gave Nathan the closest thing to a warm smile I had.  
  
Nathan returned it, a lot more genuinely than I’d expected, although I could still see the nervousness flashing around his acne-scarred face. “Uh, so this second part to the roommate interview-”  
  
“Yeah?”

“Is there actually any chance of you not letting me move in? Cause I kind of already told my parents I wasn’t coming back.”

I flapped my hand at him. “You’re fine.” I shoved most of my resumes at him, plucking one off the top. “Hold these.”

“Uh, sure. Where are we going?”

“Anywhere that looks likely to hire an Arab with a nice smile and no high school diploma.”

Nathan gave me what he probably thought was an encouraging smile. “You know, I was really hoping ‘private investigator’ meant ‘steady income’.”

“Then you’ve proved decades of dumb blonde jokes correct.” I raised an eyebrow as he looked a little like he was going to faint. “Don’t worry, I have money.”

“D-do I want to ask?”

“I did paperwork for a dying lady for two years.”

“What happened?”

“She died, genius.”

He nodded consideringly. “That would explain why your resume says – uh, what is that? Geriatric care?”

“…I’m stretching the truth.”

Nathan sighed, but left it at that. First stop, McDonald’s. He behaved, surprisingly enough, while I started my usual pitch to the bored, greasy-haired cashier –

– and got shut down a minute in with “Apply online.”

Well. Fine.

“You know most of them are going to tell you that,” Nathan said quietly on the way out.

“Shut up. I already did. You think anybody with the name  _Jamal_  is going to get past any of the upper management?”

“I mean, you never  _know_ ,” he started, then drifted off into awkward silence.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,  _Nathan_.” I glared at the offending resume, then sighed. What was the point of spending so much energy trying to solve weird twisty paranormal mysteries if freakin’ McDonald’s wouldn’t even look at my resume because I didn’t have a white enough name? Yeah, yeah, I know. Percentages. Just, I’d applied at twenty other places as well.  
Well, there were at least another twenty in walking distance.  
“Tie up your shoes. We’ve got a while to go.”

——

By the time I managed to run out of resumes – many of which I pawned off on overtired cashiers who lacked the strength of personality or resistance to charisma to actually say no – we were so far down Wellington that my feet hurt just thinking about the walk back. So when Nathan sat down at the window seat of the last bar I’d applied to and offered to buy a plate of nachos, I couldn’t quite bring myself to say no. As it turned out, I didn’t mind him. I mean, socializing was still painful. I’d found myself pretending to reread my resume or my notepad a couple of times on the way down, dreading having to make small talk. But he was happy to fill the gap with looseleaf chatter, not too densely, just a few comments here and there about his first job, friends of friends he’d known and their attempts to get hired or fired at fast food chains and coffeeshops and factories – It had the nice bonus that I knew more about him than he knew about me. I loved Jo, but she was a little too prone to uncomfortable truths about me, and I’d had a couple too many of those lately. Nathan was so comfortably detached from everything paranormal.

“So how do you  _do_  private investigationy stuff anyway?”

Speaking of which.

I sipped on my iced tea. “Mostly by knowing how to use a computer. You’d be surprised what being a millenial will get you.”

“Are we even millenials anymore?” he mused. “I think we’re technically the next one.”

“Depends. When were you born?”

“Ninety-seven.”

“Then you’re good. As long as it’s before the new millenium.”

“I thought the cut-off was ninety-four.” Then Nathan paused. “Wait, how old are you?”

I dodged the question. The follow-up question was always ‘why aren’t you in school’ and I hated that question. “I use deepweb stuff sometimes, but a lot of it is just plugins and knowing what I’m doing. And charisma.”

“Huh. Okay.” Beat. “I feel like asking too many questions is a bad idea.”

“Probably. What about you? Dreams, aspirations, nightmares?”

“Being able to eat gluten,” he said morosely, staring at the menu. “Corn chips, cheese and vegetables are usually safe.”

“Okay, so no covering the kitchen in flour.”

He cast me a bitter look.

“Joking.”

“ _Good_.”

I stirred the ice in my drink around with a straw, smiling a little despite myself. Who was I turning into? A night hanging out with a beautiful, mysterious woman and now, getting drinks with my roommate. It was almost like I could be normal. Almost like I wasn’t some sort of weird bridge between the living and the dead.

That brought me to my next problem. I had to tell Nathan  _something_.

“So…um…”

Nathan slurped on his Coke. “Yeah?”

Wording. Wording was important. “About roommate stuff.”

“Do you sleepwalk?”

Beat. “What? No.” I paused. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, good. My dad sleepwalks. It’s really awkward, especially cause he sleeps naked-”

“I  _don’t_  sleepwalk,” I interrupted. “I just, uh. Talk to myself a lot.”

He nodded, mouth still wrapped around his straw. Then he made a considering expression. “…Like, thinking out loud? Or, uh, voices in the walls kind of thing?”

“Thinking out loud.” Not entirely true. But I’d gotten threatened with the mental ward before. Just because he seemed nice so far didn’t mean I was willing to push it.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Just keep it down. As long as you do the dishes I’m fine.” Nathan finished his drink, then winced. “I’ll be right back. Washroom.”

“Sure.”

Once he was away from the table, I pulled out Will’s phone. The text had erased itself, and I made a note to myself to research whatever app they were using, but the contact was still there. I debated texting something back, but without any previous messages, I couldn’t pretend to be Will with any degree of accuracy.

Something else occurred to me, though. I flipped to a new page of my pad, and chewed on the tip of my pen. The thing was, I couldn’t remember if it’d been me or Jo, but we’d mentioned Mrs. Chaudhury by name the first time we’d met Will. It had taken seeing his picture for Will to fess up to knowing him. Maybe she’d been lying, and especially after the message from Ophis I had to consider that possibility. But –

But then there was the girl.

I had to go back a few pages. But the ghost on LeBreton Flats had seen the girl with Gurjas – the girl that nobody else seemed to know about. I didn’t know who I was looking for, or if I was looking for another body, another ghost or a missing kid. I didn’t even know if I was looking for a child or a teenager. I just knew that there’d been another person there when he died, and nobody else seemed to have any idea.

Gurjas hadn’t been using his real name with Will and Avery, and god knew who else. Maybe his first name, but certainly not the name ‘Chaudhury’. So whatever else he’d been mixed up in, he’d been keeping his wife and kids out of it.

I groaned and let my head slump down onto the table. I was still missing too many pieces. As much as I was skeptical of any grown man’s intentions, Gurjas didn’t strike me as the abductor creep type.

“Aw, don’t stress yourself out.”

A chill ran down my spine. I lifted my head.

Nathan was sitting in his chair again, leaning on his arms on the table with a casual grin on his face. He was the most relaxed I’d ever seen him – I’d never seen him not picking at his hair or his arm, or nervously scratching at the backs of his hands.

Which meant –

“I figured you’d show up again sooner or later,” I mumbled.

Nathan’s face split into a wide smile, and green eyes sparkled from his broad face, under his rumpled blond hair.


	15. Thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Transphobia, implied stalking, gaslighting, aggressive behaviour

“That was disappointingly quick,” they purred, folding their hands under their chin. “What’s the point of being a shapeshifter if you keep catching on?”

“Try investing in acting lessons.” The cold paranoia was creeping up my spine again. At least this time I knew. And they _knew_ I knew. No more mind games.

Of course, maybe I was speaking too soon.

“We’ve met before. Haven’t we?” I asked quietly, trying to dislodge the feeling from my back. It was _more_ than just paranoia. It was that feeling of having forgotten something.

A spark of excitement appeared in the false Nathan’s green eyes. “You remember?”

“Yeah.” I paused. “You were out on LeBreton. Right? You’re Kiera, or at least that’s what Avery called you.”

The spark vanished, and their eyes went flat. “Yes, that’s me.”

“That’s how you disappeared on me.” I chewed on my pen. “So can you turn into anything?”

“I’m not here to be _interviewed._ Although it’s entertaining how utterly clueless you are about yourself.”

“I wasn’t asking about myself.”

“It’s all part of the same thing.”

“How?”

“I already said I wasn’t-”

“Nobody will give me a damn straight answer,” I snapped. “And this is twice now you’ve cornered me with somebody else’s face.”

Kiera frowned, then chuckled. “Fine. What _have_ you gotten?”

“Four core elements, three celestial elements. Seven total.”

“And you know what I am.”

“A Mercury.” I couldn’t help a jibe. “I Googled it. Apparently mercury’s poisonous.”

She stuck her tongue out at me - or Nathan’s tongue, I supposed. “In large doses. Anyway, you and I are both celestial elementals.”

“Big words.”

“It means we’re special.” That grin came back. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust _her._

I debated asking her for more. But -

“Where’s Nathan?”

Her smile dropped. “Oh, boo. We’re talking big questions of identity, and you’re worried about some dumb boy?”

“Where is he?”

“I gave him a bonk on the head. He’s in the bathroom. He’ll be fine.”

“A bonk on the head,” I repeated. “You know anything that knocks somebody out is a minor concussion, right?”

“Oh, whatever. He’s not even an elemental.”

I forced myself not to react. This was one of the few moments where even I knew that punching wouldn’t solve anything. It would be really damn satisfying, though.

“So are there a lot of you shapeshifters around?” I asked as casually as I could manage. I doubted it, somehow - or at least that I’d somehow attracted _two_ shapeshifters.

“There’s a few, but we’re a rare breed compared to the rest of you.”

“So you’re the one paying me.”

“Yes. Why?”

“No reason. Just making sure I’m not mixing up my tricksters.”

Kiera snickered. “I probably _should_ spend more time with you with my real face. It is the one you saw first, though.”

“Tall, black hair?”

“That’s the one. Do you like it?”

“Jury’s out.” I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. Actually, I didn’t like anything about her. I didn’t like the way she was leaning across the table, glittering eyes fixed on mine. I didn’t like what she had done to Nathan, even if I could trust that the poor kid was alive. I didn’t like the casual way she stole identities.

More than anything else, I didn’t like the feeling that I was missing something. Something _important._ Something that I was supposed to know.

“On the topic of the case,” she said lightly, “any luck?”

“On figuring out who killed him? Nah. I’m chasing some leads, but nothing so far.”

“Maybe I can help-” She reached for the pad of paper, and I slid it off the table and into my pocket.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m your employer.”

“I have my own methods. And I work alone.”

“God, you’re a stick in the mud these days.”

_These days._

I pressed my lips together and tried not to say anything. The nachos Nathan and I had ordered showed up, and Kiera rubbed her hands together, pulling one of them up. “What _are_ these.”

“…Nachos?”

“Hum. They _look_ good.”

I pulled out Will’s phone, keeping it under the table so Kiera couldn’t guess it wasn’t mine. Thank god Will had a data plan. A quick google search gave me the address of the place we were at - 1009 Wellington Street West - and then I flipped over to the empty messenger app. Whoever Ophis was, if they had to do with Will, they wanted me for themselves.

 **WILLOW** : 1009 wellington west

 **WILLOW** : trouble

A moment later, the reply came.

 **OPHIS** : Thief.

Fuck. And no word on whether or not I was even getting a bailout.

I glanced around the restaurant. Fairly quiet, even for a Tuesday. I could just let Kiera say her piece, and hope she would leave eventually. I could hope that Nathan was just unconscious or even that he was in on it and just chilling in a stall.

“I gotta pee.”

“Uh huh. Don’t fall in.” She flashed me a dazzling smile which told me that if I took too long, she was going to come check on me. I knew her kind of person. I’d had enough of them as “concerned” foster parents.

The bathroom hallway was around the corner, and I glanced at the door to the women’s, inching the door open to look inside. Multi-stall, which was frustrating, but workable. Then I took the extra few steps down the hallway and marched into the men’s washroom.

Nathan lay unconscious against the wall, another man crouched over him. “H-hey, you can’t-”

“Save it. He’s my brother,” I lied easily. “Is he okay?”

“I’m not sure, I just came in here.” The guy reached for Nathan’s wrist. “Uh, he’s got a MedAlert bracelet - should I call an ambulance?”

I hesitated, then grabbed for the bracelet. Never mind that I was supposed to be his sister - I had to know. _Celiac’s Disease._ I fumbled with my memory. A bump on the head _shouldn’t_ give him any trouble - assuming Kiera had told the truth. But if he had a concussion…

 _Avery had better show up._ Whatever was going on, I didn’t want to stick an innocent bystander with an ambulance bill he might not be able to pay - and that I certainly couldn’t pay for him. I doubted Kiera was going to cover it.

“I got it from here.” I flashed the guy a smile. “Don’t worry.”

He didn’t look convinced, but strangers didn’t have to care about strangers. He’d done his good deed for the day.

I picked up Nathan with a huff, secretly glad he was thin as a rake. I could feel his ribs through his shirt. “God. Sorry,” I murmured to him, too quiet to be heard by anybody else - and he was out like a light. “I’ll keep you more out of the way next time.”

I made it to the door, pressed the auto-open and thanked the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act under my haggard breath -

\- and came face to face with Kiera again, drumming her fingers against the wall next to the door and black hair draped into her eyes. Her proper face, this time.

“And here I thought you’d be using the _girl’s_ bathroom.”

I hated her voice. I hated how she talked. And I hated, hated, _hated_ that she acted like we were old friends, that she could make little quips like that and they’d be funny. Like I hadn’t gotten called dyke and lez and butch and man-hands for _years._

The man behind me hid in the stall, and Kiera didn’t seem to recognize it, but I heard the click of a camera shutter. Idiot. He’d taken a picture of Kiera instead of calling the cops. The good news was, he would only get the backs of my and Nathan’s heads.

I edged out of the bathroom, but she still blocked the way back out to the restaurant. My jacket. My jacket - with my phone, my knife, my _pad -_ was still out in the restaurant.

I had Will’s phone. Fat lot of good that’d do me.

Kiera took another step towards me, looming over me in a way that I really, _really_ didn’t appreciate. “I gave you _money._ That means you report to _me.”_ Any semblance of friendliness was gone, suddenly, as she let the heavy bathroom door slam closed. “Gurjas had somebody with him. A girl. Maybe your age, a bit younger. Where did she go?”

The girl.

Fuck.

“Look, I don’t know if this is gang business or drug business or something else way, way out of my league but you can have your money back-”

Kiera laughed. “I don’t think so. We _both_ know you can’t afford that.”

Dammit, she was right. I didn’t want her to be right. I could tell myself I preferred being homeless to whatever this was, but it was - it was an _impossible_ situation.

I remembered, out of nowhere, what Avery had said about thinking loudly. Time to try it.

 _PLEASE HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME -_ I tried to remember the address as well. I got close enough, and an image of the storefront.

Kiera took another step forward, and I inched backwards, and added for good measure, _Will I am sorry about the phone thing! I do not want to die for it!_

I mean, it was worth a shot. Why had nobody given me _useful_ information, like the range on this mind reading thing?

_Hold your damn horses, I’m on my way._

Oh thank god.

A moment later, and infinitely sooner than I expected, Avery appeared in the hallway behind Kiera. _…You couldn’t say it was Kiera?_

_I didn’t know she was a PROBLEM!_

Kiera sighed and glanced over her shoulder. “Really? Already? Jamal and I were just chatting.”

_Jamal - run. She’s after you. Nathan will be fine._

I didn’t need to be told twice. I turned tail and fled - through the hallway, through the ‘employees-only’ door and as far, far away from Kiera as I could manage.


End file.
